The Critique of Practical Reason

Immanuel Kant

Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

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Preface.

This work is called the Critique of Practical Reason, not of the pure practical reason, although its
parallelism with the speculative critique would seem to require the latter term. The reason of this appears
sufficiently from the treatise itself. Its business is to show that there is pure practical reason, and for this
purpose it criticizes the entire practical faculty of reason. If it succeeds in this, it has no need to criticize the
pure faculty itself in order to see whether reason in making such a claim does not presumptuously overstep itself (as
is the case with the speculative reason). For if, as pure reason, it is actually practical, it proves its own reality
and that of its concepts by fact, and all disputation against the possibility of its being real is futile.

With this faculty, transcendental freedom is also established; freedom, namely, in that absolute sense in which
speculative reason required it in its use of the concept of causality in order to escape the antinomy into which it
inevitably falls, when in the chain of cause and effect it tries to think the unconditioned. Speculative reason could
only exhibit this concept (of freedom) problematically as not impossible to thought, without assuring it any objective
reality, and merely lest the supposed impossibility of what it must at least allow to be thinkable should endanger its
very being and plunge it into an abyss of scepticism.

Inasmuch as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the
keystone of the whole system of pure reason, even the speculative, and all other concepts (those of God and
immortality) which, as being mere ideas, remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it
obtain consistence and objective reality; that is to say, their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually
exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law.

Freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility a
priori (without, however, understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know.1 The ideas of God and immortality, however, are not conditions of the moral law, but
only conditions of the necessary object of a will determined by this law; that is to say, conditions of the practical
use of our pure reason. Hence, with respect to these ideas, we cannot affirm that we know and understand, I will not
say the actuality, but even the possibility of them. However they are the conditions of the application of the morally
determined will to its object, which is given to it a priori, viz., the summum bonum. Consequently in this practical
point of view their possibility must be assumed, although we cannot theoretically know and understand it. To justify
this assumption it is sufficient, in a practical point of view, that they contain no intrinsic impossibility
(contradiction). Here we have what, as far as speculative reason is concerned, is a merely subjective principle of
assent, which, however, is objectively valid for a reason equally pure but practical, and this principle, by means of
the concept of freedom, assures objective reality and authority to the ideas of God and immortality. Nay, there is a
subjective necessity (a need of pure reason) to assume them. Nevertheless the theoretical knowledge of reason is not
hereby enlarged, but only the possibility is given, which heretofore was merely a problem and now becomes assertion,
and thus the practical use of reason is connected with the elements of theoretical reason. And this need is not a
merely hypothetical one for the arbitrary purposes of speculation, that we must assume something if we wish in
speculation to carry reason to its utmost limits, but it is a need which has the force of law to assume something
without which that cannot be which we must inevitably set before us as the aim of our action.

1 Lest any one should imagine that he finds an inconsistency
here when I call freedom the condition of the moral law, and hereafter maintain in the treatise itself that the moral
law is the condition under which we can first become conscious of freedom, I will merely remark that freedom is the
ratio essendi of the moral law, while the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For had not the moral law been
previously distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as
freedom, although it be not contradictory. But were there no freedom it would be impossible to trace the moral law in
ourselves at all.

It would certainly be more satisfactory to our speculative reason if it could solve these problems for itself
without this circuit and preserve the solution for practical use as a thing to be referred to, but in fact our faculty
of speculation is not so well provided. Those who boast of such high knowledge ought not to keep it back, but to
exhibit it publicly that it may be tested and appreciated. They want to prove: very good, let them prove; and the
critical philosophy lays its arms at their feet as the victors. Quid statis? Nolint. Atqui licet esse beatis. As they
then do not in fact choose to do so, probably because they cannot, we must take up these arms again in order to seek in
the moral use of reason, and to base on this, the notions of God, freedom, and immortality, the possibility of which
speculation cannot adequately prove.

Here first is explained the enigma of the critical philosophy, viz.: how we deny objective reality to the
supersensible use of the categories in speculation and yet admit this reality with respect to the objects of pure
practical reason. This must at first seem inconsistent as long as this practical use is only nominally known. But when,
by a thorough analysis of it, one becomes aware that the reality spoken of does not imply any theoretical determination
of the categories and extension of our knowledge to the supersensible; but that what is meant is that in this respect
an object belongs to them, because either they are contained in the necessary determination of the will a priori, or
are inseparably connected with its object; then this inconsistency disappears, because the use we make of these
concepts is different from what speculative reason requires. On the other hand, there now appears an unexpected and
very satisfactory proof of the consistency of the speculative critical philosophy. For whereas it insisted that the
objects of experience as such, including our own subject, have only the value of phenomena, while at the same time
things in themselves must be supposed as their basis, so that not everything supersensible was to be regarded as a
fiction and its concept as empty; so now practical reason itself, without any concert with the speculative, assures
reality to a supersensible object of the category of causality, viz., freedom, although (as becomes a practical
concept) only for practical use; and this establishes on the evidence of a fact that which in the former case could
only be conceived. By this the strange but certain doctrine of the speculative critical philosophy, that the thinking
subject is to itself in internal intuition only a phenomenon, obtains in the critical examination of the practical
reason its full confirmation, and that so thoroughly that we should be compelled to adopt this doctrine, even if the
former had never proved it at all.2

2 The union of causality as freedom with causality as rational
mechanism, the former established by the moral law, the latter by the law of nature in the same subject, namely, man,
is impossible, unless we conceive him with reference to the former as a being in himself, and with reference to the
latter as a phenomenon — the former in pure consciousness, the latter in empirical consciousness. Otherwise reason
inevitably contradicts itself.

By this also I can understand why the most considerable objections which I have as yet met with against the Critique
turn about these two points, namely, on the one side, the objective reality of the categories as applied to noumena,
which is in the theoretical department of knowledge denied, in the practical affirmed; and on the other side, the
paradoxical demand to regard oneself qua subject of freedom as a noumenon, and at the same time from the point of view
of physical nature as a phenomenon in one’s own empirical consciousness; for as long as one has formed no definite
notions of morality and freedom, one could not conjecture on the one side what was intended to be the noumenon, the
basis of the alleged phenomenon, and on the other side it seemed doubtful whether it was at all possible to form any
notion of it, seeing that we had previously assigned all the notions of the pure understanding in its theoretical use
exclusively to phenomena. Nothing but a detailed criticism of the practical reason can remove all this misapprehension
and set in a clear light the consistency which constitutes its greatest merit.

So much by way of justification of the proceeding by which, in this work, the notions and principles of pure
speculative reason which have already undergone their special critical examination are, now and then, again subjected
to examination. This would not in other cases be in accordance with the systematic process by which a science is
established, since matters which have been decided ought only to be cited and not again discussed. In this case,
however, it was not only allowable but necessary, because reason is here considered in transition to a different use of
these concepts from what it had made of them before. Such a transition necessitates a comparison of the old and the new
usage, in order to distinguish well the new path from the old one and, at the same time, to allow their connection to
be observed. Accordingly considerations of this kind, including those which are once more directed to the concept of
freedom in the practical use of the pure reason, must not be regarded as an interpolation serving only to fill up the
gaps in the critical system of speculative reason (for this is for its own purpose complete), or like the props and
buttresses which in a hastily constructed building are often added afterwards; but as true members which make the
connexion of the system plain, and show us concepts, here presented as real, which there could only be presented
problematically. This remark applies especially to the concept of freedom, respecting which one cannot but observe with
surprise that so many boast of being able to understand it quite well and to explain its possibility, while they regard
it only psychologically, whereas if they had studied it in a transcendental point of view, they must have recognized
that it is not only indispensable as a problematical concept, in the complete use of speculative reason, but also quite
incomprehensible; and if they afterwards came to consider its practical use, they must needs have come to the very mode
of determining the principles of this, to which they are now so loth to assent. The concept of freedom is the stone of
stumbling for all empiricists, but at the same time the key to the loftiest practical principles for critical
moralists, who perceive by its means that they must necessarily proceed by a rational method. For this reason I beg the
reader not to pass lightly over what is said of this concept at the end of the Analytic.

I must leave it to those who are acquainted with works of this kind to judge whether such a system as that of the
practical reason, which is here developed from the critical examination of it, has cost much or little trouble,
especially in seeking not to miss the true point of view from which the whole can be rightly sketched. It presupposes,
indeed, the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, but only in so far as this gives a preliminary
acquaintance with the principle of duty, and assigns and justifies a definite formula thereof; in other respects it is
independent.3 It results from the nature of this practical faculty itself that
the complete classification of all practical sciences cannot be added, as in the critique of the speculative reason.
For it is not possible to define duties specially, as human duties, with a view to their classification, until the
subject of this definition (viz., man) is known according to his actual nature, at least so far as is necessary with
respect to duty; this, however, does not belong to a critical examination of the practical reason, the business of
which is only to assign in a complete manner the principles of its possibility, extent, and limits, without special
reference to human nature. The classification then belongs to the system of science, not to the system of
criticism.

3 A reviewer who wanted to find some fault with this work has
hit the truth better, perhaps, than he thought, when he says that no new principle of morality is set forth in it, but
only a new formula. But who would think of introducing a new principle of all morality and making himself as it were
the first discoverer of it, just as if all the world before him were ignorant what duty was or had been in
thorough-going error? But whoever knows of what importance to a mathematician a formula is, which defines accurately
what is to be done to work a problem, will not think that a formula is insignificant and useless which does the same
for all duty in general.

In the second part of the Analytic I have given, as I trust, a sufficient answer to the objection of a truth-loving
and acute critic4 of the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals — a
critic always worthy of respect the objection, namely, that the notion of good was not established before the moral
principle, as be thinks it ought to have been.5 I have also had regard to many
of the objections which have reached me from men who show that they have at heart the discovery of the truth, and I
shall continue to do so (for those who have only their old system before their eyes, and who have already settled what
is to be approved or disapproved, do not desire any explanation which might stand in the way of their own private
opinion.)

5 It might also have been objected to me that I have not first
defined the notion of the faculty of desire, or of the feeling of pleasure, although this reproach would be unfair,
because this definition might reasonably be presupposed as given in psychology. However, the definition there given
might be such as to found the determination of the faculty of desire on the feeling of pleasure (as is commonly done),
and thus the supreme principle of practical philosophy would be necessarily made empirical, which, however, remains to
be proved and in this critique is altogether refuted. It will, therefore, give this definition here in such a manner as
it ought to be given, in order to leave this contested point open at the beginning, as it should be. LIFE is the
faculty a being has of acting according to laws of the faculty of desire. The faculty of DESIRE is the being’s faculty
of becoming by means of its ideas the cause of the actual existence of the objects of these ideas. PLEASURE is the idea
of the agreement of the object, or the action with the subjective conditions of life, i.e., with the faculty of
causality of an idea in respect of the actuality of its object (or with the determination of the forces of the subject
to action which produces it). I have no further need for the purposes of this critique of notions borrowed from
psychology; the critique itself supplies the rest. It is easily seen that the question whether the faculty of desire is
always based on pleasure, or whether under certain conditions pleasure only follows the determination of desire, is by
this definition left undecided, for it is composed only of terms belonging to the pure understanding, i.e., of
categories which contain nothing empirical. Such precaution is very desirable in all philosophy and yet is often
neglected; namely, not to prejudge questions by adventuring definitions before the notion has been completely analysed,
which is often very late. It may be observed through the whole course of the critical philosophy (of the theoretical as
well as the practical reason) that frequent opportunity offers of supplying defects in the old dogmatic method of
philosophy, and of correcting errors which are not observed until we make such rational use of these notions viewing
them as a whole.

When we have to study a particular faculty of the human mind in its sources, its content, and its limits; then from
the nature of human knowledge we must begin with its parts, with an accurate and complete exposition of them; complete,
namely, so far as is possible in the present state of our knowledge of its elements. But there is another thing to be
attended to which is of a more philosophical and architectonic character, namely, to grasp correctly the idea of the
whole, and from thence to get a view of all those parts as mutually related by the aid of pure reason, and by means of
their derivation from the concept of the whole. This is only possible through the most intimate acquaintance with the
system; and those who find the first inquiry too troublesome, and do not think it worth their while to attain such an
acquaintance, cannot reach the second stage, namely, the general view, which is a synthetical return to that which had
previously been given analytically. It is no wonder then if they find inconsistencies everywhere, although the gaps
which these indicate are not in the system itself, but in their own incoherent train of thought.

I have no fear, as regards this treatise, of the reproach that I wish to introduce a new language, since the sort of
knowledge here in question has itself somewhat of an everyday character. Nor even in the case of the former critique
could this reproach occur to anyone who had thought it through and not merely turned over the leaves. To invent new
words where the language has no lack of expressions for given notions is a childish effort to distinguish oneself from
the crowd, if not by new and true thoughts, yet by new patches on the old garment. If, therefore, the readers of that
work know any more familiar expressions which are as suitable to the thought as those seem to me to be, or if they
think they can show the futility of these thoughts themselves and hence that of the expression, they would, in the
first case, very much oblige me, for I only desire to be understood: and, in the second case, they would deserve well
of philosophy. But, as long as these thoughts stand, I very much doubt that suitable and yet more common expressions
for them can be found.6

6 I am more afraid in the present treatise of occasional
misconception in respect of some expressions which I have chosen with the greatest care in order that the notion to
which they point may not be missed. Thus, in the table of categories of the Practical reason under the title of
Modality, the Permitted, and forbidden (in a practical objective point of view, possible and impossible) have almost
the same meaning in common language as the next category, duty and contrary to duty. Here, however, the former means
what coincides with, or contradicts, a merely possible practical precept (for example, the solution of all problems of
geometry and mechanics); the latter, what is similarly related to a law actually present in the reason; and this
distinction is not quite foreign even to common language, although somewhat unusual. For example, it is forbidden to an
orator, as such, to forge new words or constructions; in a certain degree this is permitted to a poet; in neither case
is there any question of duty. For if anyone chooses to forfeit his reputation as an orator, no one can prevent him. We
have here only to do with the distinction of imperatives into problematical, assertorial, and apodeictic. Similarly in
the note in which I have pared the moral ideas of practical perfection in different philosophical schools, I have
distinguished the idea of wisdom from that of holiness, although I have stated that essentially and objectively they
are the same. But in that place I understand by the former only that wisdom to which man (the Stoic) lays claim;
therefore I take it subjectively as an attribute alleged to belong to man. (Perhaps the expression virtue, with which
also they made great show, would better mark the characteristic of his school.) The expression of a postulate of pure
practical reason might give most occasion to misapprehension in case the reader confounded it with the signification of
the postulates in pure mathematics, which carry apodeictic certainty with them. These, however, postulate the
possibility of an action, the object of which has been previously recognized a priori in theory as possible, and that
with perfect certainty. But the former postulates the possibility of an object itself (God and the immortality of the
soul) from apodeictic practical laws, and therefore only for the purposes of a practical reason. This certainty of the
postulated possibility then is not at all theoretic, and consequently not apodeictic; that is to say, it is not a known
necessity as regards the object, but a necessary supposition as regards the subject, necessary for the obedience to its
objective but practical laws. It is, therefore, merely a necessary hypothesis. I could find no better expression for
this rational necessity, which is subjective, but yet true and unconditional.

In this manner, then, the a priori principles of two faculties of the mind, the faculty of cognition and that of
desire, would be found and determined as to the conditions, extent, and limits of their use, and thus a sure foundation
be paid for a scientific system of philosophy, both theoretic and practical.

Nothing worse could happen to these labours than that anyone should make the unexpected discovery that there neither
is, nor can be, any a priori knowledge at all. But there is no danger of this. This would be the same thing as if one
sought to prove by reason that there is no reason. For we only say that we know something by reason, when we are
conscious that we could have known it, even if it had not been given to us in experience; hence rational knowledge and
knowledge a priori are one and the same. It is a clear contradiction to try to extract necessity from a principle of
experience (ex pumice aquam), and to try by this to give a judgement true universality (without which there is no
rational inference, not even inference from analogy, which is at least a presumed universality and objective
necessity). To substitute subjective necessity, that is, custom, for objective, which exists only in a priori
judgements, is to deny to reason the power of judging about the object, i.e., of knowing it, and what belongs to it. It
implies, for example, that we must not say of something which often or always follows a certain antecedent state that
we can conclude from this to that (for this would imply objective necessity and the notion of an a priori connexion),
but only that we may expect similar cases (just as animals do), that is that we reject the notion of cause altogether
as false and a mere delusion. As to attempting to remedy this want of objective and consequently universal validity by
saying that we can see no ground for attributing any other sort of knowledge to other rational beings, if this
reasoning were valid, our ignorance would do more for the enlargement of our knowledge than all our meditation. For,
then, on this very ground that we have no knowledge of any other rational beings besides man, we should have a right to
suppose them to be of the same nature as we know ourselves to be: that is, we should really know them. I omit to
mention that universal assent does not prove the objective validity of a judgement (i.e., its validity as a cognition),
and although this universal assent should accidentally happen, it could furnish no proof of agreement with the object;
on the contrary, it is the objective validity which alone constitutes the basis of a necessary universal consent.

Hume would be quite satisfied with this system of universal empiricism, for, as is well known, he desired nothing
more than that, instead of ascribing any objective meaning to the necessity in the concept of cause, a merely
subjective one should be assumed, viz., custom, in order to deny that reason could judge about God, freedom, and
immortality; and if once his principles were granted, he was certainly well able to deduce his conclusions therefrom,
with all logical coherence. But even Hume did not make his empiricism so universal as to include mathematics. He holds
the principles of mathematics to be analytical; and if this were correct, they would certainly be apodeictic also: but
we could not infer from this that reason has the faculty of forming apodeictic judgements in philosophy also — that is
to say, those which are synthetical judgements, like the judgement of causality. But if we adopt a universal
empiricism, then mathematics will be included.

Now if this science is in contradiction with a reason that admits only empirical principles, as it inevitably is in
the antinomy in which mathematics prove the infinite divisibility of space, which empiricism cannot admit; then the
greatest possible evidence of demonstration is in manifest contradiction with the alleged conclusions from experience,
and we are driven to ask, like Cheselden’s blind patient, “Which deceives me, sight or touch?” (for empiricism is based
on a necessity felt, rationalism on a necessity seen). And thus universal empiricism reveals itself as absolute
scepticism. It is erroneous to attribute this in such an unqualified sense to Hume,7 since he left at least one certain touchstone (which can only be found in a priori principles),
although experience consists not only of feelings, but also of judgements.

7 Names that designate the followers of a sect have always been
accompanied with much injustice; just as if one said, “N is an Idealist.” For although he not only admits, but even
insists, that our ideas of external things have actual objects of external things corresponding to them, yet he holds
that the form of the intuition does not depend on them but on the human mind.

However, as in this philosophical and critical age such empiricism can scarcely be serious, and it is probably put
forward only as an intellectual exercise and for the purpose of putting in a clearer light, by contrast, the necessity
of rational a priori principles, we can only be grateful to those who employ themselves in this otherwise uninstructive
labour.

Introduction.

Of the Idea of a Critique of Practical Reason.

The theoretical use of reason was concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a
critical examination of it with reference to this use applied properly only to the pure faculty of cognition; because
this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily pass beyond its limits, and be lost
among unattainable objects, or even contradictory notions. It is quite different with the practical use of reason. In
this, reason is concerned with the grounds of determination of the will, which is a faculty either to produce objects
corresponding to ideas, or to determine ourselves to the effecting of such objects (whether the physical power is
sufficient or not); that is, to determine our causality. For here, reason can at least attain so far as to determine
the will, and has always objective reality in so far as it is the volition only that is in question. The first question
here then is whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will, or whether it can be a ground of
determination only as dependent on empirical conditions. Now, here there comes in a notion of causality justified by
the critique of the pure reason, although not capable of being presented empirically, viz., that of freedom; and if we
can now discover means of proving that this property does in fact belong to the human will (and so to the will of all
rational beings), then it will not only be shown that pure reason can be practical, but that it alone, and not reason
empirically limited, is indubitably practical; consequently, we shall have to make a critical examination, not of pure
practical reason, but only of practical reason generally. For when once pure reason is shown to exist, it needs no
critical examination. For reason itself contains the standard for the critical examination of every use of it. The
critique, then, of practical reason generally is bound to prevent the empirically conditioned reason from claiming
exclusively to furnish the ground of determination of the will. If it is proved that there is a [practical] reason, its
employment is alone immanent; the empirically conditioned use, which claims supremacy, is on the contrary transcendent
and expresses itself in demands and precepts which go quite beyond its sphere. This is just the opposite of what might
be said of pure reason in its speculative employment.

However, as it is still pure reason, the knowledge of which is here the foundation of its practical employment, the
general outline of the classification of a critique of practical reason must be arranged in accordance with that of the
speculative. We must, then, have the Elements and the Methodology of it; and in the former an Analytic as the rule of
truth, and a Dialectic as the exposition and dissolution of the illusion in the judgements of practical reason. But the
order in the subdivision of the Analytic will be the reverse of that in the critique of the pure speculative reason.
For, in the present case, we shall commence with the principles and proceed to the concepts, and only then, if
possible, to the senses; whereas in the case of the speculative reason we began with the senses and had to end with the
principles. The reason of this lies again in this: that now we have to do with a will, and have to consider reason, not
in its relation to objects, but to this will and its causality. We must, then, begin with the principles of a causality
not empirically conditioned, after which the attempt can be made to establish our notions of the determining grounds of
such a will, of their application to objects, and finally to the subject and its sense faculty. We necessarily begin
with the law of causality from freedom, that is, with a pure practical principle, and this determines the objects to
which alone it can be applied.

First Part.

Elements of Pure Practical Reason.

Book I. The Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.

Chapter I. Of the Principles of Pure Practical Reason.

I. Definition.

Practical principles are propositions which contain a general determination of the will, having under it several
practical rules. They are subjective, or maxims, when the condition is regarded by the subject as valid only for his
own will, but are objective, or practical laws, when the condition is recognized as objective, that is, valid for the
will of every rational being.

Remark.

Supposing that pure reason contains in itself a practical motive, that is, one adequate to determine the will, then
there are practical laws; otherwise all practical principles will be mere maxims. In case the will of a rational being
is pathologically affected, there may occur a conflict of the maxims with the practical laws recognized by itself. For
example, one may make it his maxim to let no injury pass unrevenged, and yet he may see that this is not a practical
law, but only his own maxim; that, on the contrary, regarded as being in one and the same maxim a rule for the will of
every rational being, it must contradict itself. In natural philosophy the principles of what happens, e.g., the
principle of equality of action and reaction in the communication of motion) are at the same time laws of nature; for
the use of reason there is theoretical and determined by the nature of the object. In practical philosophy, i.e., that
which has to do only with the grounds of determination of the will, the principles which a man makes for himself are
not laws by which one is inevitably bound; because reason in practical matters has to do with the subject, namely, with
the faculty of desire, the special character of which may occasion variety in the rule. The practical rule is always a
product of reason, because it prescribes action as a means to the effect. But in the case of a being with whom reason
does not of itself determine the will, this rule is an imperative, i.e., a rule characterized by “shall,” which
expresses the objective necessitation of the action and signifies that, if reason completely determined the will, the
action would inevitably take place according to this rule. Imperatives, therefore, are objectively valid, and are quite
distinct from maxims, which are subjective principles. The former either determine the conditions of the causality of
the rational being as an efficient cause, i.e., merely in reference to the effect and the means of attaining it; or
they determine the will only, whether it is adequate to the effect or not. The former would be hypothetical
imperatives, and contain mere precepts of skill; the latter, on the contrary, would be categorical, and would alone be
practical laws. Thus maxims are principles, but not imperatives. Imperatives themselves, however, when they are
conditional (i.e., do not determine the will simply as will, but only in respect to a desired effect, that is, when
they are hypothetical imperatives), are practical precepts but not laws. Laws must be sufficient to determine the will
as will, even before I ask whether I have power sufficient for a desired effect, or the means necessary to produce it;
hence they are categorical: otherwise they are not laws at all, because the necessity is wanting, which, if it is to be
practical, must be independent of conditions which are pathological and are therefore only contingently connected with
the will. Tell a man, for example, that he must be industrious and thrifty in youth, in order that he may not want in
old age; this is a correct and important practical precept of the will. But it is easy to see that in this case the
will is directed to something else which it is presupposed that it desires; and as to this desire, we must leave it to
the actor himself whether he looks forward to other resources than those of his own acquisition, or does not expect to
be old, or thinks that in case of future necessity he will be able to make shift with little. Reason, from which alone
can spring a rule involving necessity, does, indeed, give necessity to this precept (else it would not be an
imperative), but this is a necessity dependent on subjective conditions, and cannot be supposed in the same degree in
all subjects. But that reason may give laws it is necessary that it should only need to presuppose itself, because
rules are objectively and universally valid only when they hold without any contingent subjective conditions, which
distinguish one rational being from another. Now tell a man that he should never make a deceitful promise, this is a
rule which only concerns his will, whether the purposes he may have can be attained thereby or not; it is the volition
only which is to be determined a priori by that rule. If now it is found that this rule is practically right, then it
is a law, because it is a categorical imperative. Thus, practical laws refer to the will only, without considering what
is attained by its causality, and we may disregard this latter (as belonging to the world of sense) in order to have
them quite pure.

II. Theorem I.

All practical principles which presuppose an object (matter) of the faculty of desire as the ground of determination
of the will are empirical and can furnish no practical laws.

By the matter of the faculty of desire I mean an object the realization of which is desired. Now, if the desire for
this object precedes the practical rule and is the condition of our making it a principle, then I say (in the first
place) this principle is in that case wholly empirical, for then what determines the choice is the idea of an object
and that relation of this idea to the subject by which its faculty of desire is determined to its realization. Such a
relation to the subject is called the pleasure in the realization of an object. This, then, must be presupposed as a
condition of the possibility of determination of the will. But it is impossible to know a priori of any idea of an
object whether it will be connected with pleasure or pain, or be indifferent. In such cases, therefore, the determining
principle of the choice must be empirical and, therefore, also the practical material principle which presupposes it as
a condition.

In the second place, since susceptibility to a pleasure or pain can be known only empirically and cannot hold in the
same degree for all rational beings, a principle which is based on this subjective condition may serve indeed as a
maxim for the subject which possesses this susceptibility, but not as a law even to him (because it is wanting in
objective necessity, which must be recognized a priori); it follows, therefore, that such a principle can never furnish
a practical law.

III. Theorem II.

All material practical principles as such are of one and the same kind and come under the general principle of
self-love or private happiness.

Pleasure arising from the idea of the existence of a thing, in so far as it is to determine the desire of this
thing, is founded on the susceptibility of the subject, since it depends on the presence of an object; hence it belongs
to sense (feeling), and not to understanding, which expresses a relation of the idea to an object according to
concepts, not to the subject according to feelings. It is, then, practical only in so far as the faculty of desire is
determined by the sensation of agreeableness which the subject expects from the actual existence of the object. Now, a
rational being’s consciousness of the pleasantness of life uninterruptedly accompanying his whole existence is
happiness; and the principle which makes this the supreme ground of determination of the will is the principle of
self-love. All material principles, then, which place the determining ground of the will in the pleasure or pain to be
received from the existence of any object are all of the same kind, inasmuch as they all belong to the principle of
self-love or private happiness.

Corollary.

All material practical rules place the determining principle of the will in the lower desires; and if there were no
purely formal laws of the will adequate to determine it, then we could not admit any higher desire at all.

Remark I.

It is surprising that men, otherwise acute, can think it possible to distinguish between higher and lower desires,
according as the ideas which are connected with the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the senses or in the
understanding; for when we inquire what are the determining grounds of desire, and place them in some expected
pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence the idea of this pleasing object is derived, but only how much it pleases.
Whether an idea has its seat and source in the understanding or not, if it can only determine the choice by
presupposing a feeling of pleasure in the subject, it follows that its capability of determining the choice depends
altogether on the nature of the inner sense, namely, that this can be agreeably affected by it. However dissimilar
ideas of objects may be, though they be ideas of the understanding, or even of the reason in contrast to ideas of
sense, yet the feeling of pleasure, by means of which they constitute the determining principle of the will (the
expected satisfaction which impels the activity to the production of the object), is of one and the same kind, not only
inasmuch as it can only be known empirically, but also inasmuch as it affects one and the same vital force which
manifests itself in the faculty of desire, and in this respect can only differ in degree from every other ground of
determination. Otherwise, how could we compare in respect of magnitude two principles of determination, the ideas of
which depend upon different faculties, so as to prefer that which affects the faculty of desire in the highest degree.
The same man may return unread an instructive book which he cannot again obtain, in order not to miss a hunt; he may
depart in the midst of a fine speech, in order not to be late for dinner; he may leave a rational conversation, such as
he otherwise values highly, to take his place at the gaming-table; he may even repulse a poor man whom he at other
times takes pleasure in benefiting, because he has only just enough money in his pocket to pay for his admission to the
theatre. If the determination of his will rests on the feeling of the agreeableness or disagreeableness that he expects
from any cause, it is all the same to him by what sort of ideas he will be affected. The only thing that concerns him,
in order to decide his choice, is, how great, how long continued, how easily obtained, and how often repeated, this
agreeableness is. Just as to the man who wants money to spend, it is all the same whether the gold was dug out of the
mountain or washed out of the sand, provided it is everywhere accepted at the same value; so the man who cares only for
the enjoyment of life does not ask whether the ideas are of the understanding or the senses, but only how much and how
great pleasure they will give for the longest time. It is only those that would gladly deny to pure reason the power of
determining the will, without the presupposition of any feeling, who could deviate so far from their own exposition as
to describe as quite heterogeneous what they have themselves previously brought under one and the same principle. Thus,
for example, it is observed that we can find pleasure in the mere exercise of power, in the consciousness of our
strength of mind in overcoming obstacles which are opposed to our designs, in the culture of our mental talents, etc.;
and we justly call these more refined pleasures and enjoyments, because they are more in our power than others; they do
not wear out, but rather increase the capacity for further enjoyment of them, and while they delight they at the same
time cultivate. But to say on this account that they determine the will in a different way and not through sense,
whereas the possibility of the pleasure presupposes a feeling for it implanted in us, which is the first condition of
this satisfaction; this is just as when ignorant persons that like to dabble in metaphysics imagine matter so subtle,
so supersubtle that they almost make themselves giddy with it, and then think that in this way they have conceived it
as a spiritual and yet extended being. If with Epicurus we make virtue determine the will only by means of the pleasure
it promises, we cannot afterwards blame him for holding that this pleasure is of the same kind as those of the coarsest
senses. For we have no reason whatever to charge him with holding that the ideas by which this feeling is excited in us
belong merely to the bodily senses. As far as can be conjectured, he sought the source of many of them in the use of
the higher cognitive faculty, but this did not prevent him, and could not prevent him, from holding on the principle
above stated, that the pleasure itself which those intellectual ideas give us, and by which alone they can determine
the will, is just of the same kind. Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher, and yet the most rarely
found. The ancient Greek schools give us more examples of it than we find in our syncretistic age, in which a certain
shallow and dishonest system of compromise of contradictory principles is devised, because it commends itself better to
a public which is content to know something of everything and nothing thoroughly, so as to please every party.

The principle of private happiness, however much understanding and reason may be used in it, cannot contain any
other determining principles for the will than those which belong to the lower desires; and either there are no
[higher] desires at all, or pure reason must of itself alone be practical; that is, it must be able to determine the
will by the mere form of the practical rule without supposing any feeling, and consequently without any idea of the
pleasant or unpleasant, which is the matter of the desire, and which is always an empirical condition of the
principles. Then only, when reason of itself determines the will (not as the servant of the inclination), it is really
a higher desire to which that which is pathologically determined is subordinate, and is really, and even specifically,
distinct from the latter, so that even the slightest admixture of the motives of the latter impairs its strength and
superiority; just as in a mathematical demonstration the least empirical condition would degrade and destroy its force
and value. Reason, with its practical law, determines the will immediately, not by means of an intervening feeling of
pleasure or pain, not even of pleasure in the law itself, and it is only because it can, as pure reason, be practical,
that it is possible for it to be legislative.

Remark II.

To be happy is necessarily the wish of every finite rational being, and this, therefore, is inevitably a determining
principle of its faculty of desire. For we are not in possession originally of satisfaction with our whole existence —
a bliss which would imply a consciousness of our own independent self-sufficiency this is a problem imposed upon us by
our own finite nature, because we have wants and these wants regard the matter of our desires, that is, something that
is relative to a subjective feeling of pleasure or pain, which determines what we need in order to be satisfied with
our condition. But just because this material principle of determination can only be empirically known by the subject,
it is impossible to regard this problem as a law; for a law being objective must contain the very same principle of
determination of the will in all cases and for all rational beings. For, although the notion of happiness is in every
case the foundation of practical relation of the objects to the desires, yet it is only a general name for the
subjective determining principles, and determines nothing specifically; whereas this is what alone we are concerned
with in this practical problem, which cannot be solved at all without such specific determination. For it is every
man’s own special feeling of pleasure and pain that decides in what he is to place his happiness, and even in the same
subject this will vary with the difference of his wants according as this feeling changes, and thus a law which is
subjectively necessary (as a law of nature) is objectively a very contingent practical principle, which can and must be
very different in different subjects and therefore can never furnish a law; since, in the desire for happiness it is
not the form (of conformity to law) that is decisive, but simply the matter, namely, whether I am to expect pleasure in
following the law, and how much. Principles of self-love may, indeed, contain universal precepts of skill (how to find
means to accomplish one’s purpose), but in that case they are merely theoretical principles;8 as, for example, how he who would like to eat bread should contrive a mill; but practical precepts
founded on them can never be universal, for the determining principle of the desire is based on the feeling pleasure
and pain, which can never be supposed to be universally directed to the same objects.

8 Propositions which in mathematics or physics are called
practical ought properly to be called technical. For they have nothing to do with the determination of the theoretical
they only point out how the certain must is to be produced and are, therefore, just as theoretical as any propositions
which express the connection of a cause with an effect. Now whoever chooses the effect must also choose the cause.

Even supposing, however, that all finite rational beings were thoroughly agreed as to what were the objects of their
feelings of pleasure and pain, and also as to the means which they must employ to attain the one and avoid the other;
still, they could by no means set up the principle of self-love as a practical law, for this unanimity itself would be
only contingent. The principle of determination would still be only subjectively valid and merely empirical, and would
not possess the necessity which is conceived in every law, namely, an objective necessity arising from a priori
grounds; unless, indeed, we hold this necessity to be not at all practical, but merely physical, viz., that our action
is as inevitably determined by our inclination, as yawning when we see others yawn. It would be better to maintain that
there are no practical laws at all, but only counsels for the service of our desires, than to raise merely subjective
principles to the rank of practical laws, which have objective necessity, and not merely subjective, and which must be
known by reason a priori, not by experience (however empirically universal this may be). Even the rules of
corresponding phenomena are only called laws of nature (e.g., the mechanical laws), when we either know them really a
priori, or (as in the case of chemical laws) suppose that they would be known a priori from objective grounds if our
insight reached further. But in the case of merely subjective practical principles, it is expressly made a condition
that they rest, not on objective, but on subjective conditions of choice, and hence that they must always be
represented as mere maxims, never as practical laws. This second remark seems at first sight to be mere verbal
refinement, but it defines the terms of the most important distinction which can come into consideration in practical
investigations.

IV. Theorem III.

A rational being cannot regard his maxims as practical universal laws, unless he conceives them as principles which
determine the will, not by their matter, but by their form only.

By the matter of a practical principle I mean the object of the will. This object is either the determining ground
of the will or it is not. In the former case the rule of the will is subjected to an empirical condition (viz., the
relation of the determining idea to the feeling of pleasure and pain), consequently it can not be a practical law. Now,
when we abstract from a law all matter, i.e., every object of the will (as a determining principle), nothing is left
but the mere form of a universal legislation. Therefore, either a rational being cannot conceive his subjective
practical principles, that is, his maxims, as being at the same time universal laws, or he must suppose that their mere
form, by which they are fitted for universal legislation, is alone what makes them practical laws.

Remark.

The commonest understanding can distinguish without instruction what form of maxim is adapted for universal
legislation, and what is not. Suppose, for example, that I have made it my maxim to increase my fortune by every safe
means. Now, I have a deposit in my hands, the owner of which is dead and has left no writing about it. This is just the
case for my maxim. I desire then to know whether that maxim can also hold good as a universal practical law. I apply
it, therefore, to the present case, and ask whether it could take the form of a law, and consequently whether I can by
my maxim at the same time give such a law as this, that everyone may deny a deposit of which no one can produce a
proof. I at once become aware that such a principle, viewed as a law, would annihilate itself, because the result would
be that there would be no deposits. A practical law which I recognise as such must be qualified for universal
legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if I say that my will is subject to a
practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination
fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put
in the form of a universal law, it would destroy itself.

It is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men could have thought of calling the desire of happiness a universal
practical law on the ground that the desire is universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by which everyone makes this
desire determine his will. For whereas in other cases a universal law of nature makes everything harmonious; here, on
the contrary, if we attribute to the maxim the universality of a law, the extreme opposite of harmony will follow, the
greatest opposition and the complete destruction of the maxim itself and its purpose. For, in that case, the will of
all has not one and the same object, but everyone has his own (his private welfare), which may accidentally accord with
the purposes of others which are equally selfish, but it is far from sufficing for a law; because the occasional
exceptions which one is permitted to make are endless, and cannot be definitely embraced in one universal rule. In this
manner, then, results a harmony like that which a certain satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple
bent on going to ruin, “O, marvellous harmony, what he wishes, she wishes also”; or like what is said of the pledge of
Francis I to the Emperor Charles V, “What my brother Charles wishes that I wish also” (viz., Milan). Empirical
principles of determination are not fit for any universal external legislation, but just as little for internal; for
each man makes his own subject the foundation of his inclination, and in the same subject sometimes one inclination,
sometimes another, has the preponderance. To discover a law which would govern them all under this condition, namely,
bringing them all into harmony, is quite impossible.

V. Problem I.

Supposing that the mere legislative form of maxims is alone the sufficient determining principle of a will, to find
the nature of the will which can be determined by it alone.

Since the bare form of the law can only be conceived by reason, and is, therefore, not an object of the senses, and
consequently does not belong to the class of phenomena, it follows that the idea of it, which determines the will, is
distinct from all the principles that determine events in nature according to the law of causality, because in their
case the determining principles must themselves be phenomena. Now, if no other determining principle can serve as a law
for the will except that universal legislative form, such a will must be conceived as quite independent of the natural
law of phenomena in their mutual relation, namely, the law of causality; such independence is called freedom in the
strictest, that is, in the transcendental, sense; consequently, a will which can have its law in nothing but the mere
legislative form of the maxim is a free will.

VI. Problem II.

Supposing that a will is free, to find the law which alone is competent to determine it necessarily.

Since the matter of the practical law, i.e., an object of the maxim, can never be given otherwise than empirically,
and the free will is independent on empirical conditions (that is, conditions belonging to the world of sense) and yet
is determinable, consequently a free will must find its principle of determination in the law, and yet independently of
the matter of the law. But, besides the matter of the law, nothing is contained in it except the legislative form. It
is the legislative form, then, contained in the maxim, which can alone constitute a principle of determination of the
[free] will.

Remark.

Thus freedom and an unconditional practical law reciprocally imply each other. Now I do not ask here whether they
are in fact distinct, or whether an unconditioned law is not rather merely the consciousness of a pure practical reason
and the latter identical with the positive concept of freedom; I only ask, whence begins our knowledge of the
unconditionally practical, whether it is from freedom or from the practical law? Now it cannot begin from freedom, for
of this we cannot be immediately conscious, since the first concept of it is negative; nor can we infer it from
experience, for experience gives us the knowledge only of the law of phenomena, and hence of the mechanism of nature,
the direct opposite of freedom. It is therefore the moral law, of which we become directly conscious (as soon as we
trace for ourselves maxims of the will), that first presents itself to us, and leads directly to the concept of
freedom, inasmuch as reason presents it as a principle of determination not to be outweighed by any sensible
conditions, nay, wholly independent of them. But how is the consciousness, of that moral law possible? We can become
conscious of pure practical laws just as we are conscious of pure theoretical principles, by attending to the necessity
with which reason prescribes them and to the elimination of all empirical conditions, which it directs. The concept of
a pure will arises out of the former, as that of a pure understanding arises out of the latter. That this is the true
subordination of our concepts, and that it is morality that first discovers to us the notion of freedom, hence that it
is practical reason which, with this concept, first proposes to speculative reason the most insoluble problem, thereby
placing it in the greatest perplexity, is evident from the following consideration: Since nothing in phenomena can be
explained by the concept of freedom, but the mechanism of nature must constitute the only clue; moreover, when pure
reason tries to ascend in the series of causes to the unconditioned, it falls into an antinomy which is entangled in
incomprehensibilities on the one side as much as the other; whilst the latter (namely, mechanism) is at least useful in
the explanation of phenomena, therefore no one would ever have been so rash as to introduce freedom into science, had
not the moral law, and with it practical reason, come in and forced this notion upon us. Experience, however, confirms
this order of notions. Suppose some one asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object and the
opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. [Ask him]— if a gallows were erected before the house where he finds
this opportunity, in order that he should be hanged thereon immediately after the gratification of his lust, whether he
could not then control his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. Ask him, however — if his
sovereign ordered him, on pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom
the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his
love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or not, but he
must unhesitatingly admit that it is possible to do so. He judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he
is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free — a fact which but for the moral law he would never have
known.

VII. Fundamental Law of the Pure Practical Reason.

Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation.

Remark.

Pure geometry has postulates which are practical propositions, but contain nothing further than the assumption that
we can do something if it is required that we should do it, and these are the only geometrical propositions that
concern actual existence. They are, then, practical rules under a problematical condition of the will; but here the
rule says: We absolutely must proceed in a certain manner. The practical rule is, therefore, unconditional, and hence
it is conceived a priori as a categorically practical proposition by which the will is objectively determined
absolutely and immediately (by the practical rule itself, which thus is in this case a law); for pure reason practical
of itself is here directly legislative. The will is thought as independent on empirical conditions, and, therefore, as
pure will determined by the mere form of the law, and this principle of determination is regarded as the supreme
condition of all maxims. The thing is strange enough, and has no parallel in all the rest of our practical knowledge.
For the a priori thought of a possible universal legislation which is therefore merely problematical, is
unconditionally commanded as a law without borrowing anything from experience or from any external will. This, however,
is not a precept to do something by which some desired effect can be attained (for then the will would depend on
physical conditions), but a rule that determines the will a priori only so far as regards the forms of its maxims; and
thus it is at least not impossible to conceive that a law, which only applies to the subjective form of principles, yet
serves as a principle of determination by means of the objective form of law in general. We may call the consciousness
of this fundamental law a fact of reason, because we cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, e.g., the
consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given), but it forces itself on us as a synthetic a priori
proposition, which is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical. It would, indeed, be analytical if the
freedom of the will were presupposed, but to presuppose freedom as a positive concept would require an intellectual
intuition, which cannot here be assumed; however, when we regard this law as given, it must be observed, in order not
to fall into any misconception, that it is not an empirical fact, but the sole fact of the pure reason, which thereby
announces itself as originally legislative (sic volo, sic jubeo).

Corollary.

Pure reason is practical of itself alone and gives (to man) a universal law which we call the moral law.

Remark.

The fact just mentioned is undeniable. It is only necessary to analyse the judgement that men pass on the lawfulness
of their actions, in order to find that, whatever inclination may say to the contrary, reason, incorruptible and
selfconstrained, always confronts the maxim of the will in any action with the pure will, that is, with itself,
considering itself as a priori practical. Now this principle of morality, just on account of the universality of the
legislation which makes it the formal supreme determining principle of the will, without regard to any subjective
differences, is declared by the reason to be a law for all rational beings, in so far as they have a will, that is, a
power to determine their causality by the conception of rules; and, therefore, so far as they are capable of acting
according to principles, and consequently also according to practical a priori principles (for these alone have the
necessity that reason requires in a principle). It is, therefore, not limited to men only, but applies to all finite
beings that possess reason and will; nay, it even includes the Infinite Being as the supreme intelligence. In the
former case, however, the law has the form of an imperative, because in them, as rational beings, we can suppose a pure
will, but being creatures affected with wants and physical motives, not a holy will, that is, one which would be
incapable of any maxim conflicting with the moral law. In their case, therefore, the moral law is an imperative, which
commands categorically, because the law is unconditioned; the relation of such a will to this law is dependence under
the name of obligation, which implies a constraint to an action, though only by reason and its objective law; and this
action is called duty, because an elective will, subject to pathological affections (though not determined by them,
and, therefore, still free), implies a wish that arises from subjective causes and, therefore, may often be opposed to
the pure objective determining principle; whence it requires the moral constraint of a resistance of the practical
reason, which may be called an internal, but intellectual, compulsion. In the supreme intelligence the elective will is
rightly conceived as incapable of any maxim which could not at the same time be objectively a law; and the notion of
holiness, which on that account belongs to it, places it, not indeed above all practical laws, but above all
practically restrictive laws, and consequently above obligation and duty. This holiness of will is, however, a
practical idea, which must necessarily serve as a type to which finite rational beings can only approximate
indefinitely, and which the pure moral law, which is itself on this account called holy, constantly and rightly holds
before their eyes. The utmost that finite practical reason can effect is to be certain of this indefinite progress of
one’s maxims and of their steady disposition to advance. This is virtue, and virtue, at least as a naturally acquired
faculty, can never be perfect, because assurance in such a case never becomes apodeictic certainty and, when it only
amounts to persuasion, is very dangerous.

VIII. Theorem IV.

The autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of all duties which conform to them; on the
other hand, heteronomy of the elective will not only cannot be the basis of any obligation, but is, on the contrary,
opposed to the principle thereof and to the morality of the will.

In fact the sole principle of morality consists in the independence on all matter of the law (namely, a desired
object), and in the determination of the elective will by the mere universal legislative form of which its maxim must
be capable. Now this independence is freedom in the negative sense, and this self-legislation of the pure, and
therefore practical, reason is freedom in the positive sense. Thus the moral law expresses nothing else than the
autonomy of the pure practical reason; that is, freedom; and this is itself the formal condition of all maxims, and on
this condition only can they agree with the supreme practical law. If therefore the matter of the volition, which can
be nothing else than the object of a desire that is connected with the law, enters into the practical law, as the
condition of its possibility, there results heteronomy of the elective will, namely, dependence on the physical law
that we should follow some impulse or inclination. In that case the will does not give itself the law, but only the
precept how rationally to follow pathological law; and the maxim which, in such a case, never contains the universally
legislative form, not only produces no obligation, but is itself opposed to the principle of a pure practical reason
and, therefore, also to the moral disposition, even though the resulting action may be conformable to the law.

Remark.

Hence a practical precept, which contains a material (and therefore empirical) condition, must never be reckoned a
practical law. For the law of the pure will, which is free, brings the will into a sphere quite different from the
empirical; and as the necessity involved in the law is not a physical necessity, it can only consist in the formal
conditions of the possibility of a law in general. All the matter of practical rules rests on subjective conditions,
which give them only a conditional universality (in case I desire this or that, what I must do in order to obtain it),
and they all turn on the principle of private happiness. Now, it is indeed undeniable that every volition must have an
object, and therefore a matter; but it does not follow that this is the determining principle and the condition of the
maxim; for, if it is so, then this cannot be exhibited in a universally legislative form, since in that case the
expectation of the existence of the object would be the determining cause of the choice, and the volition must
presuppose the dependence of the faculty of desire on the existence of something; but this dependence can only be
sought in empirical conditions and, therefore, can never furnish a foundation for a necessary and universal rule. Thus,
the happiness of others may be the object of the will of a rational being. But if it were the determining principle of
the maxim, we must assume that we find not only a rational satisfaction in the welfare of others, but also a want such
as the sympathetic disposition in some men occasions. But I cannot assume the existence of this want in every rational
being (not at all in God). The matter, then, of the maxim may remain, but it must not be the condition of it, else the
maxim could not be fit for a law. Hence, the mere form of law, which limits the matter, must also be a reason for
adding this matter to the will, not for presupposing it. For example, let the matter be my own happiness. This (rule),
if I attribute it to everyone (as, in fact, I may, in the case of every finite being), can become an objective
practical law only if I include the happiness of others. Therefore, the law that we should promote the happiness of
others does not arise from the assumption that this is an object of everyone’s choice, but merely from this, that the
form of universality which reason requires as the condition of giving to a maxim of self-love the objective validity of
a law is the principle that determines the will. Therefore it was not the object (the happiness of others) that
determined the pure will, but it was the form of law only, by which I restricted my maxim, founded on inclination, so
as to give it the universality of a law, and thus to adapt it to the practical reason; and it is this restriction
alone, and not the addition of an external spring, that can give rise to the notion of the obligation to extend the
maxim of my self-love to the happiness of others.

Remark II.

The direct opposite of the principle of morality is, when the principle of private happiness is made the determining
principle of the will, and with this is to be reckoned, as I have shown above, everything that places the determining
principle which is to serve as a law, anywhere but in the legislative form of the maxim. This contradiction, however,
is not merely logical, like that which would arise between rules empirically conditioned, if they were raised to the
rank of necessary principles of cognition, but is practical, and would ruin morality altogether were not the voice of
reason in reference to the will so clear, so irrepressible, so distinctly audible, even to the commonest men. It can
only, indeed, be maintained in the perplexing speculations of the schools, which are bold enough to shut their ears
against that heavenly voice, in order to support a theory that costs no trouble.

Suppose that an acquaintance whom you otherwise liked were to attempt to justify himself to you for having borne
false witness, first by alleging the, in his view, sacred duty of consulting his own happiness; then by enumerating the
advantages which he had gained thereby, pointing out the prudence he had shown in securing himself against detection,
even by yourself, to whom he now reveals the secret, only in order that he may be able to deny it at any time; and
suppose he were then to affirm, in all seriousness, that he has fulfilled a true human duty; you would either laugh in
his face, or shrink back from him with disgust; and yet, if a man has regulated his principles of action solely with a
view to his own advantage, you would have nothing whatever to object against this mode of proceeding. Or suppose some
one recommends you a man as steward, as a man to whom you can blindly trust all your affairs; and, in order to inspire
you with confidence, extols him as a prudent man who thoroughly understands his own interest, and is so indefatigably
active that he lets slip no opportunity of advancing it; lastly, lest you should be afraid of finding a vulgar
selfishness in him, praises the good taste with which he lives; not seeking his pleasure in money-making, or in coarse
wantonness, but in the enlargement of his knowledge, in instructive intercourse with a select circle, and even in
relieving the needy; while as to the means (which, of course, derive all their value from the end), he is not
particular, and is ready to use other people’s money for the purpose as if it were his own, provided only he knows that
he can do so safely, and without discovery; you would either believe that the recommender was mocking you, or that he
had lost his senses. So sharply and clearly marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the commonest
eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to the one or the other. The few remarks that follow may appear
superfluous where the truth is so plain, but at least they may serve to give a little more distinctness to the
judgement of common sense.

The principle of happiness may, indeed, furnish maxims, but never such as would be competent to be laws of the will,
even if universal happiness were made the object. For since the knowledge of this rests on mere empirical data, since
every man’s judgement on it depends very much on his particular point of view, which is itself moreover very variable,
it can supply only general rules, not universal; that is, it can give rules which on the average will most frequently
fit, but not rules which must hold good always and necessarily; hence, no practical laws can be founded on it. Just
because in this case an object of choice is the foundation of the rule and must therefore precede it, the rule can
refer to nothing but what is [felt], and therefore it refers to experience and is founded on it, and then the variety
of judgement must be endless. This principle, therefore, does not prescribe the same practical rules to all rational
beings, although the rules are all included under a common title, namely, that of happiness. The moral law, however, is
conceived as objectively necessary, only because it holds for everyone that has reason and will.

The maxim of self-love (prudence) only advises; the law of morality commands. Now there is a great difference
between that which we are advised to do and that to which we are obliged.

The commonest intelligence can easily and without hesitation see what, on the principle of autonomy of the will,
requires to be done; but on supposition of heteronomy of the will, it is hard and requires knowledge of the world to
see what is to be done. That is to say, what duty is, is plain of itself to everyone; but what is to bring true durable
advantage, such as will extend to the whole of one’s existence, is always veiled in impenetrable obscurity; and much
prudence is required to adapt the practical rule founded on it to the ends of life, even tolerably, by making proper
exceptions. But the moral law commands the most punctual obedience from everyone; it must, therefore, not be so
difficult to judge what it requires to be done, that the commonest unpractised understanding, even without worldly
prudence, should fail to apply it rightly.

It is always in everyone’s power to satisfy the categorical command of morality; whereas it is seldom possible, and
by no means so to everyone, to satisfy the empirically conditioned precept of happiness, even with regard to a single
purpose. The reason is that in the former case there is question only of the maxim, which must be genuine and pure; but
in the latter case there is question also of one’s capacity and physical power to realize a desired object. A command
that everyone should try to make himself happy would be foolish, for one never commands anyone to do what he of himself
infallibly wishes to do. We must only command the means, or rather supply them, since he cannot do everything that he
wishes. But to command morality under the name of duty is quite rational; for, in the first place, not everyone is
willing to obey its precepts if they oppose his inclinations; and as to the means of obeying this law, these need not
in this case be taught, for in this respect whatever he wishes to do he can do.

He who has lost at play may be vexed at himself and his folly, but if he is conscious of having cheated at play
(although he has gained thereby), he must despise himself as soon as he compares himself with the moral law. This must,
therefore, be something different from the principle of private happiness. For a man must have a different criterion
when he is compelled to say to himself: “I am a worthless fellow, though I have filled my purse”; and when he approves
himself, and says: “I am a prudent man, for I have enriched my treasure.”

Finally, there is something further in the idea of our practical reason, which accompanies the transgression of a
moral law — namely, its ill desert. Now the notion of punishment, as such, cannot be united with that of becoming a
partaker of happiness; for although he who inflicts the punishment may at the same time have the benevolent purpose of
directing this punishment to this end, yet it must first be justified in itself as punishment, i.e., as mere harm, so
that if it stopped there, and the person punished could get no glimpse of kindness hidden behind this harshness, he
must yet admit that justice was done him, and that his reward was perfectly suitable to his conduct. In every
punishment, as such, there must first be justice, and this constitutes the essence of the notion. Benevolence may,
indeed, be united with it, but the man who has deserved punishment has not the least reason to reckon upon this.
Punishment, then, is a physical evil, which, though it be not connected with moral evil as a natural consequence, ought
to be connected with it as a consequence by the principles of a moral legislation. Now, if every crime, even without
regarding the physical consequence with respect to the actor, is in itself punishable, that is, forfeits happiness (at
least partially), it is obviously absurd to say that the crime consisted just in this, that he has drawn punishment on
himself, thereby injuring his private happiness (which, on the principle of self-love, must be the proper notion of all
crime). According to this view, the punishment would be the reason for calling anything a crime, and justice would, on
the contrary, consist in omitting all punishment, and even preventing that which naturally follows; for, if this were
done, there would no longer be any evil in the action, since the harm which otherwise followed it, and on account of
which alone the action was called evil, would now be prevented. To look, however, on all rewards and punishments as
merely the machinery in the hand of a higher power, which is to serve only to set rational creatures striving after
their final end (happiness), this is to reduce the will to a mechanism destructive of freedom; this is so evident that
it need not detain us.

More refined, though equally false, is the theory of those who suppose a certain special moral sense, which sense
and not reason determines the moral law, and in consequence of which the consciousness of virtue is supposed to be
directly connected with contentment and pleasure; that of vice, with mental dissatisfaction and pain; thus reducing the
whole to the desire of private happiness. Without repeating what has been said above, I will here only remark the
fallacy they fall into. In order to imagine the vicious man as tormented with mental dissatisfaction by the
consciousness of his transgressions, they must first represent him as in the main basis of his character, at least in
some degree, morally good; just as he who is pleased with the consciousness of right conduct must be conceived as
already virtuous. The notion of morality and duty must, therefore, have preceded any regard to this satisfaction, and
cannot be derived from it. A man must first appreciate the importance of what we call duty, the authority of the moral
law, and the immediate dignity which the following of it gives to the person in his own eyes, in order to feel that
satisfaction in the consciousness of his conformity to it and the bitter remorse that accompanies the consciousness of
its transgression. It is, therefore, impossible to feel this satisfaction or dissatisfaction prior to the knowledge of
obligation, or to make it the basis of the latter. A man must be at least half honest in order even to be able to form
a conception of these feelings. I do not deny that as the human will is, by virtue of liberty, capable of being
immediately determined by the moral law, so frequent practice in accordance with this principle of determination can,
at least, produce subjectively a feeling of satisfaction; on the contrary, it is a duty to establish and to cultivate
this, which alone deserves to be called properly the moral feeling; but the notion of duty cannot be derived from it,
else we should have to suppose a feeling for the law as such, and thus make that an object of sensation which can only
be thought by the reason; and this, if it is not to be a flat contradiction, would destroy all notion of duty and put
in its place a mere mechanical play of refined inclinations sometimes contending with the coarser.

If now we compare our formal supreme principle of pure practical reason (that of autonomy of the will) with all
previous material principles of morality, we can exhibit them all in a table in which all possible cases are exhausted,
except the one formal principle; and thus we can show visibly that it is vain to look for any other principle than that
now proposed. In fact all possible principles of determination of the will are either merely subjective, and therefore
empirical, or are also objective and rational; and both are either external or internal.

Practical Material Principles of Determination taken as the Foundation of Morality, are:

SUBJECTIVE.

EXTERNAL

INTERNAL

Education
(Montaigne)

Physical feeling
(Epicurus)

The civil Constitution
(Mandeville)

Moral feeling
(Hutcheson)

OBJECTIVE.

INTERNAL

EXTERNAL

Perfection
(Wolf and the Stoics)

Will of God
(Crusius and other theological Moralists)

Those of the upper table are all empirical and evidently incapable of furnishing the universal principle of
morality; but those in the lower table are based on reason (for perfection as a quality of things, and the highest
perfection conceived as substance, that is, God, can only be thought by means of rational concepts). But the former
notion, namely, that of perfection, may either be taken in a theoretic signification, and then it means nothing but the
completeness of each thing in its own kind (transcendental), or that of a thing merely as a thing (metaphysical); and
with that we are not concerned here. But the notion of perfection in a practical sense is the fitness or sufficiency of
a thing for all sorts of purposes. This perfection, as a quality of man and consequently internal, is nothing but
talent and, what strengthens or completes this, skill. Supreme perfection conceived as substance, that is God, and
consequently external (considered practically), is the sufficiency of this being for all ends. Ends then must first be
given, relatively to which only can the notion of perfection (whether internal in ourselves or external in God) be the
determining principle of the will. But an end — being an object which must precede the determination of the will by a
practical rule and contain the ground of the possibility of this determination, and therefore contain also the matter
of the will, taken as its determining principle — such an end is always empirical and, therefore, may serve for the
Epicurean principle of the happiness theory, but not for the pure rational principle of morality and duty. Thus,
talents and the improvement of them, because they contribute to the advantages of life; or the will of God, if
agreement with it be taken as the object of the will, without any antecedent independent practical principle, can be
motives only by reason of the happiness expected therefrom. Hence it follows, first, that all the principles here
stated are material; secondly, that they include all possible material principles; and, finally, the conclusion, that
since material principles are quite incapable of furnishing the supreme moral law (as has been shown), the formal
practical principle the pure reason (according to which the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the
supreme and immediate determining principle of the will) is the only one possible which is adequate to furnish
categorical imperatives, that is, practical laws (which make actions a duty), and in general to serve as the principle
of morality, both in criticizing conduct and also in its application to the human will to determine it.

I. Of the Deduction of the Fundamental Principles of Pure Practical Reason.

This Analytic shows that pure reason can be practical, that is, can of itself determine the will independently of
anything empirical; and this it proves by a fact in which pure reason in us proves itself actually practical, namely,
the autonomy shown in the fundamental principle of morality, by which reason determines the will to action.

It shows at the same time that this fact is inseparably connected with the consciousness of freedom of the will,
nay, is identical with it; and by this the will of a rational being, although as belonging to the world of sense it
recognizes itself as necessarily subject to the laws of causality like other efficient causes; yet, at the same time,
on another side, namely, as a being in itself, is conscious of existing in and being determined by an intelligible
order of things; conscious not by virtue of a special intuition of itself, but by virtue of certain dynamical laws
which determine its causality in the sensible world; for it has been elsewhere proved that if freedom is predicated of
us, it transports us into an intelligible order of things.

Now, if we compare with this the analytical part of the critique of pure speculative reason, we shall see a
remarkable contrast. There it was not fundamental principles, but pure, sensible intuition (space and time), that was
the first datum that made a priori knowledge possible, though only of objects of the senses. Synthetical principles
could not be derived from mere concepts without intuition; on the contrary, they could only exist with reference to
this intuition, and therefore to objects of possible experience, since it is the concepts of the understanding, united
with this intuition, which alone make that knowledge possible which we call experience. Beyond objects of experience,
and therefore with regard to things as noumena, all positive knowledge was rightly disclaimed for speculative reason.
This reason, however, went so far as to establish with certainty the concept of noumena; that is, the possibility, nay,
the necessity, of thinking them; for example, it showed against all objections that the supposition of freedom,
negatively considered, was quite consistent with those principles and limitations of pure theoretic reason. But it
could not give us any definite enlargement of our knowledge with respect to such objects, but, on the contrary, cut off
all view of them altogether.

On the other hand, the moral law, although it gives no view, yet gives us a fact absolutely inexplicable from any
data of the sensible world, and the whole compass of our theoretical use of reason, a fact which points to a pure world
of the understanding, nay, even defines it positively and enables us to know something of it, namely, a law.

This law (as far as rational beings are concerned) gives to the world of sense, which is a sensible system of
nature, the form of a world of the understanding, that is, of a supersensible system of nature, without interfering
with its mechanism. Now, a system of nature, in the most general sense, is the existence of things under laws. The
sensible nature of rational beings in general is their existence under laws empirically conditioned, which, from the
point of view of reason, is heteronomy. The supersensible nature of the same beings, on the other hand, is their
existence according to laws which are independent of every empirical condition and, therefore, belong to the autonomy
of pure reason. And, since the laws by which the existence of things depends on cognition are practical, supersensible
nature, so far as we can form any notion of it, is nothing else than a system of nature under the autonomy of pure
practical reason. Now, the law of this autonomy is the moral law, which, therefore, is the fundamental law of a
supersensible nature, and of a pure world of understanding, whose counterpart must exist in the world of sense, but
without interfering with its laws. We might call the former the archetypal world (natura archetypa), which we only know
in the reason; and the latter the ectypal world (natura ectypa), because it contains the possible effect of the idea of
the former which is the determining principle of the will. For the moral law, in fact, transfers us ideally into a
system in which pure reason, if it were accompanied with adequate physical power, would produce the summum bonum, and
it determines our will to give the sensible world the form of a system of rational beings.

The least attention to oneself proves that this idea really serves as the model for the determinations of our
will.

When the maxim which I am disposed to follow in giving testimony is tested by the practical reason, I always
consider what it would be if it were to hold as a universal law of nature. It is manifest that in this view it would
oblige everyone to speak the truth. For it cannot hold as a universal law of nature that statements should be allowed
to have the force of proof and yet to be purposely untrue. Similarly, the maxim which I adopt with respect to disposing
freely of my life is at once determined, when I ask myself what it should be, in order that a system, of which it is
the law, should maintain itself. It is obvious that in such a system no one could arbitrarily put an end to his own
life, for such an arrangement would not be a permanent order of things. And so in all similar cases. Now, in nature, as
it actually is an object of experience, the free will is not of itself determined to maxims which could of themselves
be the foundation of a natural system of universal laws, or which could even be adapted to a system so constituted; on
the contrary, its maxims are private inclinations which constitute, indeed, a natural whole in conformity with
pathological (physical) laws, but could not form part of a system of nature, which would only be possible through our
will acting in accordance with pure practical laws. Yet we are, through reason, conscious of a law to which all our
maxims are subject, as though a natural order must be originated from our will. This law, therefore, must be the idea
of a natural system not given in experience, and yet possible through freedom; a system, therefore, which is
supersensible, and to which we give objective reality, at least in a practical point of view, since we look on it as an
object of our will as pure rational beings.

Hence the distinction between the laws of a natural system to which the will is subject, and of a natural system
which is subject to a will (as far as its relation to its free actions is concerned), rests on this, that in the former
the objects must be causes of the ideas which determine the will; whereas in the latter the will is the cause of the
objects; so that its causality has its determining principle solely in the pure faculty of reason, which may therefore
be called a pure practical reason.

There are therefore two very distinct problems: how, on the one side, pure reason can cognise objects a priori, and
how on the other side it can be an immediate determining principle of the will, that is, of the causality of the
rational being with respect to the reality of objects (through the mere thought of the universal validity of its own
maxims as laws).

The former, which belongs to the critique of the pure speculative reason, requires a previous explanation, how
intuitions without which no object can be given, and, therefore, none known synthetically, are possible a priori; and
its solution turns out to be that these are all only sensible and, therefore, do not render possible any speculative
knowledge which goes further than possible experience reaches; and that therefore all the principles of that pure
speculative reason avail only to make experience possible; either experience of given objects or of those that may be
given ad infinitum, but never are completely given.

The latter, which belongs to the critique of practical reason, requires no explanation how the objects of the
faculty of desire are possible, for that being a problem of the theoretical knowledge of nature is left to the critique
of the speculative reason, but only how reason can determine the maxims of the will; whether this takes place only by
means of empirical ideas as principles of determination, or whether pure reason can be practical and be the law of a
possible order of nature, which is not empirically knowable. The possibility of such a supersensible system of nature,
the conception of which can also be the ground of its reality through our own free will, does not require any a priori
intuition (of an intelligible world) which, being in this case supersensible, would be impossible for us. For the
question is only as to the determining principle of volition in its maxims, namely, whether it is empirical, or is a
conception of the pure reason (having the legal character belonging to it in general), and how it can be the latter. It
is left to the theoretic principles of reason to decide whether the causality of the will suffices for the realization
of the objects or not, this being an inquiry into the possibility of the objects of the volition. Intuition of these
objects is therefore of no importance to the practical problem. We are here concerned only with the determination of
the will and the determining principles of its maxims as a free will, not at all with the result. For, provided only
that the will conforms to the law of pure reason, then let its power in execution be what it may, whether according to
these maxims of legislation of a possible system of nature any such system really results or not, this is no concern of
the critique, which only inquires whether, and in what way, pure reason can be practical, that is directly determine
the will.

In this inquiry criticism may and must begin with pure practical laws and their reality. But instead of intuition it
takes as their foundation the conception of their existence in the intelligible world, namely, the concept of freedom.
For this concept has no other meaning, and these laws are only possible in relation to freedom of the will; but freedom
being supposed, they are necessary; or conversely freedom is necessary because those laws are necessary, being
practical postulates. It cannot be further explained how this consciousness of the moral law, or, what is the same
thing, of freedom, is possible; but that it is admissible is well established in the theoretical critique.

The exposition of the supreme principle of practical reason is now finished; that is to say, it has been — shown
first, what it contains, that it subsists for itself quite a priori and independent of empirical principles; and next
in what it is distinguished from all other practical principles. With the deduction, that is, the justification of its
objective and universal validity, and the discernment of the possibility of such a synthetical proposition a priori, we
cannot expect to succeed so well as in the case of the principles of pure theoretical reason. For these referred to
objects of possible experience, namely, to phenomena, and we could prove that these phenomena could be known as objects
of experience only by being brought under the categories in accordance with these laws; and consequently that all
possible experience must conform to these laws. But I could not proceed in this way with the deduction of the moral
law. For this does not concern the knowledge of the properties of objects, which may be given to the reason from some
other source; but a knowledge which can itself be the ground of the existence of the objects, and by which reason in a
rational being has causality, i.e., pure reason, which can be regarded as a faculty immediately determining the
will.

Now all our human insight is at an end as soon as we have arrived at fundamental powers or faculties, for the
possibility of these cannot be understood by any means, and just as little should it be arbitrarily invented and
assumed. Therefore, in the theoretic use of reason, it is experience alone that can justify us in assuming them. But
this expedient of adducing empirical proofs, instead of a deduction from a priori sources of knowledge, is denied us
here in respect to the pure practical faculty of reason. For whatever requires to draw the proof of its reality from
experience must depend for the grounds of its possibility on principles of experience; and pure, yet practical, reason
by its very notion cannot be regarded as such. Further, the moral law is given as a fact of pure reason of which we are
a priori conscious, and which is apodeictically certain, though it be granted that in experience no example of its
exact fulfilment can be found. Hence, the objective reality of the moral law cannot be proved by any deduction by any
efforts of theoretical reason, whether speculative or empirically supported, and therefore, even if we renounced its
apodeictic certainty, it could not be proved a posteriori by experience, and yet it is firmly established of
itself.

But instead of this vainly sought deduction of the moral principle, something else is found which was quite
unexpected, namely, that this moral principle serves conversely as the principle of the deduction of an inscrutable
faculty which no experience could prove, but of which speculative reason was compelled at least to assume the
possibility (in order to find amongst its cosmological ideas the unconditioned in the chain of causality, so as not to
contradict itself)— I mean the faculty of freedom. The moral law, which itself does not require a justification, proves
not merely the possibility of freedom, but that it really belongs to beings who recognize this law as binding on
themselves. The moral law is in fact a law of the causality of free agents and, therefore, of the possibility of a
supersensible system of nature, just as the metaphysical law of events in the world of sense was a law of causality of
the sensible system of nature; and it therefore determines what speculative philosophy was compelled to leave
undetermined, namely, the law for a causality, the concept of which in the latter was only negative; and therefore for
the first time gives this concept objective reality.

This sort of credential of the moral law, viz., that it is set forth as a principle of the deduction of freedom,
which is a causality of pure reason, is a sufficient substitute for all a priori justification, since theoretic reason
was compelled to assume at least the possibility of freedom, in order to satisfy a want of its own. For the moral law
proves its reality, so as even to satisfy the critique of the speculative reason, by the fact that it adds a positive
definition to a causality previously conceived only negatively, the possibility of which was incomprehensible to
speculative reason, which yet was compelled to suppose it. For it adds the notion of a reason that directly determines
the will (by imposing on its maxims the condition of a universal legislative form); and thus it is able for the first
time to give objective, though only practical, reality to reason, which always became transcendent when it sought to
proceed speculatively with its ideas. It thus changes the transcendent use of reason into an immanent use (so that
reason is itself, by means of ideas, an efficient cause in the field of experience).

The determination of the causality of beings in the world of sense, as such, can never be unconditioned; and yet for
every series of conditions there must be something unconditioned, and therefore there must be a causality which is
determined wholly by itself. Hence, the idea of freedom as a faculty of absolute spontaneity was not found to be a want
but, as far as its possibility is concerned, an analytic principle of pure speculative reason. But as it is absolutely
impossible to find in experience any example in accordance with this idea, because amongst the causes of things as
phenomena it would be impossible to meet with any absolutely unconditioned determination of causality, we were only
able to defend our supposition that a freely acting cause might be a being in the world of sense, in so far as it is
considered in the other point of view as a noumenon, showing that there is no contradiction in regarding all its
actions as subject to physical conditions so far as they are phenomena, and yet regarding its causality as physically
unconditioned, in so far as the acting being belongs to the world of understanding, and in thus making the concept of
freedom the regulative principle of reason. By this principle I do not indeed learn what the object is to which that
sort of causality is attributed; but I remove the difficulty, for, on the one side, in the explanation of events in the
world, and consequently also of the actions of rational beings, I leave to the mechanism of physical necessity the
right of ascending from conditioned to condition ad infinitum, while on the other side I keep open for speculative
reason the place which for it is vacant, namely, the intelligible, in order to transfer the unconditioned thither. But
I was not able to verify this supposition; that is, to change it into the knowledge of a being so acting, not even into
the knowledge of the possibility of such a being. This vacant place is now filled by pure practical reason with a
definite law of causality in an intelligible world (causality with freedom), namely, the moral law. Speculative reason
does not hereby gain anything as regards its insight, but only as regards the certainty of its problematical notion of
freedom, which here obtains objective reality, which, though only practical, is nevertheless undoubted. Even the notion
of causality-the application, and consequently the signification, of which holds properly only in relation to
phenomena, so as to connect them into experiences (as is shown by the Critique of Pure Reason)— is not so enlarged as
to extend its use beyond these limits. For if reason sought to do this, it would have to show how the logical relation
of principle and consequence can be used synthetically in a different sort of intuition from the sensible; that is how
a causa noumenon is possible. This it can never do; and, as practical reason, it does not even concern itself with it,
since it only places the determining principle of causality of man as a sensible creature (which is given) in pure
reason (which is therefore called practical); and therefore it employs the notion of cause, not in order to know
objects, but to determine causality in relation to objects in general. It can abstract altogether from the application
of this notion to objects with a view to theoretical knowledge (since this concept is always found a priori in the
understanding even independently of any intuition). Reason, then, employs it only for a practical purpose, and hence we
can transfer the determining principle of the will into the intelligible order of things, admitting, at the same time,
that we cannot understand how the notion of cause can determine the knowledge of these things. But reason must cognise
causality with respect to the actions of the will in the sensible world in a definite manner; otherwise, practical
reason could not really produce any action. But as to the notion which it forms of its own causality as noumenon, it
need not determine it theoretically with a view to the cognition of its supersensible existence, so as to give it
significance in this way. For it acquires significance apart from this, though only for practical use, namely, through
the moral law. Theoretically viewed, it remains always a pure a priori concept of the understanding, which can be
applied to objects whether they have been given sensibly or not, although in the latter case it has no definite
theoretical significance or application, but is only a formal, though essential, conception of the understanding
relating to an object in general. The significance which reason gives it through the moral law is merely practical,
inasmuch as the idea of the law of causality (of the will) has self causality, or is its determining principle.

II. Of the Right that Pure Reason in its Practical use has to an Extension which is not possible to it in its
Speculative Use.

We have in the moral principle set forth a law of causality, the determining principle of which is set above all the
conditions of the sensible world; we have it conceived how the will, as belonging to the intelligible world, is
determinable, and therefore we have its subject (man) not merely conceived as belonging to a world of pure
understanding, and in this respect unknown (which the critique of speculative reason enabled us to do), but also
defined as regards his causality by means of a law which cannot be reduced to any physical law of the sensible world;
and therefore our knowledge is extended beyond the limits of that world, a pretension which the Critique of Pure Reason
declared to be futile in all speculation. Now, how is the practical use of pure reason here to be reconciled with the
theoretical, as to the determination of the limits of its faculty?

David Hume, of whom we may say that he commenced the assault on the claims of pure reason, which made a thorough
investigation of it necessary, argued thus: The notion of cause is a notion that involves the necessity of the
connexion of the existence of different things (and that, in so far as they are different), so that, given A, I know
that something quite distinct there from, namely B, must necessarily also exist. Now necessity can be attributed to a
connection, only in so far as it is known a priori, for experience would only enable us to know of such a connection
that it exists, not that it necessarily exists. Now, it is impossible, says he, to know a priori and as necessary the
connection between one thing and another (or between one attribute and another quite distinct) when they have not been
given in experience. Therefore the notion of a cause is fictitious and delusive and, to speak in the mildest way, is an
illusion, only excusable inasmuch as the custom (a subjective necessity) of perceiving certain things, or their
attributes as often associated in existence along with or in succession to one another, is insensibly taken for an
objective necessity of supposing such a connection in the objects themselves; and thus the notion of a cause has been
acquired surreptitiously and not legitimately; nay, it can never be so acquired or authenticated, since it demands a
connection in itself vain, chimerical, and untenable in presence of reason, and to which no object can ever correspond.
In this way was empiricism first introduced as the sole source of principles, as far as all knowledge of the existence
of things is concerned (mathematics therefore remaining excepted); and with empiricism the most thorough scepticism,
even with regard to the whole science of nature( as philosophy). For on such principles we can never conclude from
given attributes of things as existing to a consequence (for this would require the notion of cause, which involves the
necessity of such a connection); we can only, guided by imagination, expect similar cases — an expectation which is
never certain, however often it has been fulfilled. Of no event could we say: a certain thing must have preceded it, on
which it necessarily followed; that is, it must have a cause; and therefore, however frequent the cases we have known
in which there was such an antecedent, so that a rule could be derived from them, yet we never could suppose it as
always and necessarily so happening; we should, therefore, be obliged to leave its share to blind chance, with which
all use of reason comes to an end; and this firmly establishes scepticism in reference to arguments ascending from
effects to causes and makes it impregnable.

Mathematics escaped well, so far, because Hume thought that its propositions were analytical; that is, proceeded
from one property to another, by virtue of identity and, consequently, according to the principle of contradiction.
This, however, is not the case, since, on the contrary, they are synthetical; and although geometry, for example, has
not to do with the existence of things, but only with their a priori properties in a possible intuition, yet it
proceeds just as in the case of the causal notion, from one property (A) to another wholly distinct (B), as necessarily
connected with the former. Nevertheless, mathematical science, so highly vaunted for its apodeictic certainty, must at
last fall under this empiricism for the same reason for which Hume put custom in the place of objective necessity in
the notion of cause and, in spite of all its pride, must consent to lower its bold pretension of claiming assent a
priori and depend for assent to the universality of its propositions on the kindness of observers, who, when called as
witnesses, would surely not hesitate to admit that what the geometer propounds as a theorem they have always perceived
to be the fact, and, consequently, although it be not necessarily true, yet they would permit us to expect it to be
true in the future. In this manner Hume’s empiricism leads inevitably to scepticism, even with regard to mathematics,
and consequently in every scientific theoretical use of reason (for this belongs either to philosophy or mathematics).
Whether with such a terrible overthrow of the chief branches of knowledge, common reason will escape better, and will
not rather become irrecoverably involved in this destruction of all knowledge, so that from the same principles a
universal scepticism should follow (affecting, indeed, only the learned), this I will leave everyone to judge for
himself.

As regards my own labours in the critical examination of pure reason, which were occasioned by Hume’s sceptical
teaching, but went much further and embraced the whole field of pure theoretical reason in its synthetic use and,
consequently, the field of what is called metaphysics in general; I proceeded in the following manner with respect to
the doubts raised by the Scottish philosopher touching the notion of causality. If Hume took the objects of experience
for things in themselves (as is almost always done), he was quite right in declaring the notion of cause to be a
deception and false illusion; for as to things in themselves, and their attributes as such, it is impossible to see why
because A is given, B, which is different, must necessarily be also given, and therefore he could by no means admit
such an a priori knowledge of things in themselves. Still less could this acute writer allow an empirical origin of
this concept, since this is directly contradictory to the necessity of connection which constitutes the essence of the
notion of causality, hence the notion was proscribed, and in its place was put custom in the observation of the course
of perceptions.

It resulted, however, from my inquiries, that the objects with which we have to do in experience are by no means
things in themselves, but merely phenomena; and that although in the case of things in themselves it is impossible to
see how, if A is supposed, it should be contradictory that B, which is quite different from A, should not also be
supposed (i.e., to see the necessity of the connection between A as cause and B as effect); yet it can very well be
conceived that, as phenomena, they may be necessarily connected in one experience in a certain way (e.g., with regard
to time-relations); so that they could not be separated without contradicting that connection, by means of which this
experience is possible in which they are objects and in which alone they are cognisable by us. And so it was found to
be in fact; so that I was able not only to prove the objective reality of the concept of cause in regard to objects of
experience, but also to deduce it as an a priori concept by reason of the necessity of the connection it implied; that
is, to show the possibility of its origin from pure understanding without any empirical sources; and thus, after
removing the source of empiricism, I was able also to overthrow the inevitable consequence of this, namely, scepticism,
first with regard to physical science, and then with regard to mathematics (in which empiricism has just the same
grounds), both being sciences which have reference to objects of possible experience; herewith overthrowing the
thorough doubt of whatever theoretic reason professes to discern.

But how is it with the application of this category of causality (and all the others; for without them there can be
no knowledge of anything existing) to things which are not objects of possible experience, but lie beyond its bounds?
For I was able to deduce the objective reality of these concepts only with regard to objects of possible experience.
But even this very fact, that I have saved them, only in case I have proved that objects may by means of them be
thought, though not determined a priori; this it is that gives them a place in the pure understanding, by which they
are referred to objects in general (sensible or not sensible). If anything is still wanting, it is that which is the
condition of the application of these categories, and especially that of causality, to objects, namely, intuition; for
where this is not given, the application with a view to theoretic knowledge of the object, as a noumenon, is impossible
and, therefore, if anyone ventures on it, is (as in the Critique of Pure Reason) absolutely forbidden. Still, the
objective reality of the concept (of causality) remains, and it can be used even of noumena, but without our being able
in the least to define the concept theoretically so as to produce knowledge. For that this concept, even in reference
to an object, contains nothing impossible, was shown by this, that, even while applied to objects of sense, its seat
was certainly fixed in the pure understanding; and although, when referred to things in themselves (which cannot be
objects of experience), it is not capable of being determined so as to represent a definite object for the purpose of
theoretic knowledge; yet for any other purpose (for instance, a practical) it might be capable of being determined so
as to have such application. This could not be the case if, as Hume maintained, this concept of causality contained
something absolutely impossible to be thought.

In order now to discover this condition of the application of the said concept to noumena, we need only recall why
we are not content with its application to objects of experience, but desire also to apply it to things in themselves.
It will appear, then, that it is not a theoretic but a practical purpose that makes this a necessity. In speculation,
even if we were successful in it, we should not really gain anything in the knowledge of nature, or generally with
regard to such objects as are given, but we should make a wide step from the sensibly conditioned (in which we have
already enough to do to maintain ourselves, and to follow carefully the chain of causes) to the supersensible, in order
to complete our knowledge of principles and to fix its limits; whereas there always remains an infinite chasm unfilled
between those limits and what we know; and we should have hearkened to a vain curiosity rather than a solid-desire of
knowledge.

But, besides the relation in which the understanding stands to objects (in theoretical knowledge), it has also a
relation to the faculty of desire, which is therefore called the will, and the pure will, inasmuch as pure
understanding (in this case called reason) is practical through the mere conception of a law. The objective reality of
a pure will, or, what is the same thing, of a pure practical reason, is given in the moral law a priori, as it were, by
a fact, for so we may name a determination of the will which is inevitable, although it does not rest on empirical
principles. Now, in the notion of a will the notion of causality is already contained, and hence the notion of a pure
will contains that of a causality accompanied with freedom, that is, one which is not determinable by physical laws,
and consequently is not capable of any empirical intuition in proof of its reality, but, nevertheless, completely
justifies its objective reality a priori in the pure practical law; not, indeed (as is easily seen) for the purposes of
the theoretical, but of the practical use of reason. Now the notion of a being that has free will is the notion of a
causa noumenon, and that this notion involves no contradiction, we are already assured by the fact — that inasmuch as
the concept of cause has arisen wholly from pure understanding, and has its objective reality assured by the deduction,
as it is moreover in its origin independent of any sensible conditions, it is, therefore, not restricted to phenomena
(unless we wanted to make a definite theoretic use of it), but can be applied equally to things that are objects of the
pure understanding. But, since this application cannot rest on any intuition (for intuition can only be sensible),
therefore, causa noumenon, as regards the theoretic use of reason, although a possible and thinkable, is yet an empty
notion. Now, I do not desire by means of this to understand theoretically the nature of a being, in so far as it has a
pure will; it is enough for me to have thereby designated it as such, and hence to combine the notion of causality with
that of freedom (and what is inseparable from it, the moral law, as its determining principle). Now, this right I
certainly have by virtue of the pure, not-empirical origin of the notion of cause, since I do not consider myself
entitled to make any use of it except in reference to the moral law which determines its reality, that is, only a
practical use.

If, with Hume, I had denied to the notion of causality all objective reality in its [theoretic] use, not merely with
regard to things in themselves (the supersensible), but also with regard to the objects of the senses, it would have
lost all significance, and being a theoretically impossible notion would have been declared to be quite useless; and
since what is nothing cannot be made any use of, the practical use of a concept theoretically null would have been
absurd. But, as it is, the concept of a causality free from empirical conditions, although empty, i.e., without any
appropriate intuition), is yet theoretically possible, and refers to an indeterminate object; but in compensation
significance is given to it in the moral law and consequently in a practical sense. I have, indeed, no intuition which
should determine its objective theoretic reality, but not the less it has a real application, which is exhibited in
concreto in intentions or maxims; that is, it has a practical reality which can be specified, and this is sufficient to
justify it even with a view to noumena.

Now, this objective reality of a pure concept of the understanding in the sphere of the supersensible, once brought
in, gives an objective reality also to all the other categories, although only so far as they stand in necessary
connexion with the determining principle of the will (the moral law); a reality only of practical application, which
has not the least effect in enlarging our theoretical knowledge of these objects, or the discernment of their nature by
pure reason. So we shall find also in the sequel that these categories refer only to beings as intelligences, and in
them only to the relation of reason to the will; consequently, always only to the practical, and beyond this cannot
pretend to any knowledge of these beings; and whatever other properties belonging to the theoretical representation of
supersensible things may be brought into connexion with these categories, this is not to be reckoned as knowledge, but
only as a right (in a practical point of view, however, it is a necessity) to admit and assume such beings, even in the
case where we [conceive] supersensible beings (e.g., God) according to analogy, that is, a purely rational relation, of
which we make a practical use with reference to what is sensible; and thus the application to the supersensible solely
in a practical point of view does not give pure theoretic reason the least encouragement to run riot into the
transcendent.

Chapter II. Of the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason.

By a concept of the practical reason I understand the idea of an object as an effect possible to be
produced through freedom. To be an object of practical knowledge, as such, signifies, therefore, only the relation of
the will to the action by which the object or its opposite would be realized; and to decide whether something is an
object of pure practical reason or not is only to discern the possibility or impossibility of willing the action by
which, if we had the required power (about which experience must decide), a certain object would be realized. If the
object be taken as the determining principle of our desire, it must first be known whether it is physically possible by
the free use of our powers, before we decide whether it is an object of practical reason or not. On the other hand, if
the law can be considered a priori as the determining principle of the action, and the latter therefore as determined
by pure practical reason, the judgement whether a thing is an object of pure practical reason or not does not depend at
all on the comparison with our physical power; and the question is only whether we should will an action that is
directed to the existence of an object, if the object were in our power; hence the previous question is only as the
moral possibility of the action, for in this case it is not the object, but the law of the will, that is the
determining principle of the action. The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by
the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily
shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

If the notion of good is not to be derived from an antecedent practical law, but, on the contrary, is to serve as
its foundation, it can only be the notion of something whose existence promises pleasure, and thus determines the
causality of the subject to produce it, that is to say, determines the faculty of desire. Now, since it is impossible
to discern a priori what idea will be accompanied with pleasure and what with pain, it will depend on experience alone
to find out what is primarily good or evil. The property of the subject, with reference to which alone this experiment
can be made, is the feeling of pleasure and pain, a receptivity belonging to the internal sense; thus that only would
be primarily good with which the sensation of pleasure is immediately connected, and that simply evil which immediately
excites pain. Since, however, this is opposed even to the usage of language, which distinguishes the pleasant from the
good, the unpleasant from the evil, and requires that good and evil shall always be judged by reason, and, therefore,
by concepts which can be communicated to everyone, and not by mere sensation, which is limited to individual [subjects]
and their susceptibility; and, since nevertheless, pleasure or pain cannot be connected with any idea of an object a
priori, the philosopher who thought himself obliged to make a feeling of pleasure the foundation of his practical
judgements would call that good which is a means to the pleasant, and evil, what is a cause of unpleasantness and pain;
for the judgement on the relation of means to ends certainly belongs to reason. But, although reason is alone capable
of discerning the connexion of means with their ends (so that the will might even be defined as the faculty of ends,
since these are always determining principles of the desires), yet the practical maxims which would follow from the
aforesaid principle of the good being merely a means, would never contain as the object of the will anything good in
itself, but only something good for something; the good would always be merely the useful, and that for which it is
useful must always lie outside the will, in sensation. Now if this as a pleasant sensation were to be distinguished
from the notion of good, then there would be nothing primarily good at all, but the good would have to be sought only
in the means to something else, namely, some pleasantness.

It is an old formula of the schools: Nihil appetimus nisi sub ratione boni; Nihil aversamur nisi sub ratione mali,
and it is used often correctly, but often also in a manner injurious to philosophy, because the expressions boni and
mali are ambiguous, owing to the poverty of language, in consequence of which they admit a double sense, and,
therefore, inevitably bring the practical laws into ambiguity; and philosophy, which in employing them becomes aware of
the different meanings in the same word, but can find no special expressions for them, is driven to subtile
distinctions about which there is subsequently no unanimity, because the distinction could not be directly marked by
any suitable expression.9

9 Besides this, the expression sub ratione boni is also
ambiguous. For it may mean: “We represent something to ourselves as good, when and because we desire (will) it”; or “We
desire something because we represent it to ourselves as good,” so that either the desire determines the notion of the
object as a good, or the notion of good determines the desire (the will); so that in the first case sub ratione boni
would mean, “We will something under the idea of the good”; in the second, “In consequence of this idea,” which, as
determining the volition, must precede it.

The German language has the good fortune to possess expressions which do not allow this difference to be overlooked.
It possesses two very distinct concepts and especially distinct expressions for that which the Latins express by a
single word, bonum. For bonum it has das Gute [good], and das Wohl [well, weal], for malum das Bose [evil], and das
Ubel [ill, bad], or das Well [woe]. So that we express two quite distinct judgements when we consider in an action the
good and evil of it, or our weal and woe (ill). Hence it already follows that the above quoted psychological
proposition is at least very doubtful if it is translated: “We desire nothing except with a view to our weal or woe”;
on the other hand, if we render it thus: “Under the direction of reason we desire nothing except so far as we esteem it
good or evil,” it is indubitably certain and at the same time quite clearly expressed.

Well or ill always implies only a reference to our condition, as pleasant or unpleasant, as one of pleasure or pain,
and if we desire or avoid an object on this account, it is only so far as it is referred to our sensibility and to the
feeling of pleasure or pain that it produces. But good or evil always implies a reference to the will, as determined by
the law of reason, to make something its object; for it is never determined directly by the object and the idea of it,
but is a faculty of taking a rule of reason for or motive of an action (by which an object may be realized). Good and
evil therefore are properly referred to actions, not to the sensations of the person, and if anything is to be good or
evil absolutely (i.e., in every respect and without any further condition), or is to be so esteemed, it can only be the
manner of acting, the maxim of the will, and consequently the acting person himself as a good or evil man that can be
so called, and not a thing.

However, then, men may laugh at the Stoic, who in the severest paroxysms of gout cried out: “Pain, however thou
tormentest me, I will never admit that thou art an evil (kakov, malum)”: he was right. A bad thing it certainly was,
and his cry betrayed that; but that any evil attached to him thereby, this he had no reason whatever to admit, for pain
did not in the least diminish the worth of his person, but only that of his condition. If he had been conscious of a
single lie, it would have lowered his pride, but pain served only to raise it, when he was conscious that he had not
deserved it by any unrighteous action by which he had rendered himself worthy of punishment.

What we call good must be an object of desire in the judgement of every rational man, and evil an object of aversion
in the eyes of everyone; therefore, in addition to sense, this judgement requires reason. So it is with truthfulness,
as opposed to lying; so with justice, as opposed to violence, &c. But we may call a thing a bad [or ill) thing,
which yet everyone must at the same time acknowledge to be good, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. The man who
submits to a surgical operation feels it no doubt as a bad thing, but by their reason he and everyone acknowledge it to
be good. If a man who delights in annoying and vexing peaceable people at last receives a right good beating, this is
no doubt a bad thing; but everyone approves it and regards it as a good thing, even though nothing else resulted from
it; nay, even the man who receives it must in his reason acknowledge that he has met justice, because he sees the
proportion between good conduct and good fortune, which reason inevitably places before him, here put into
practice.

No doubt our weal and woe are of very great importance in the estimation of our practical reason, and as far as our
nature as sensible beings is concerned, our happiness is the only thing of consequence, provided it is estimated as
reason especially requires, not by the transitory sensation, but by the influence that this has on our whole existence,
and on our satisfaction therewith; but it is not absolutely the only thing of consequence. Man is a being who, as
belonging to the world of sense, has wants, and so far his reason has an office which it cannot refuse, namely, to
attend to the interest of his sensible nature, and to form practical maxims, even with a view to the happiness of this
life, and if possible even to that of a future. But he is not so completely an animal as to be indifferent to what
reason says on its own account, and to use it merely as an instrument for the satisfaction of his wants as a sensible
being. For the possession of reason would not raise his worth above that of the brutes, if it is to serve him only for
the same purpose that instinct serves in them; it would in that case be only a particular method which nature had
employed to equip man for the same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without qualifying him for any higher
purpose. No doubt once this arrangement of nature has been made for him he requires reason in order to take into
consideration his weal and woe, but besides this he possesses it for a higher purpose also, namely, not only to take
into consideration what is good or evil in itself, about which only pure reason, uninfluenced by any sensible interest,
can judge, but also to distinguish this estimate thoroughly from the former and to make it the supreme condition
thereof.

In estimating what is good or evil in itself, as distinguished from what can be so called only relatively, the
following points are to be considered. Either a rational principle is already conceived, as of itself the determining
principle of the will, without regard to possible objects of desire (and therefore by the more legislative form of the
maxim), and in that case that principle is a practical a priori law, and pure reason is supposed to be practical of
itself. The law in that case determines the will directly; the action conformed to it is good in itself; a will whose
maxim always conforms to this law is good absolutely in every respect and is the supreme condition of all good. Or the
maxim of the will is consequent on a determining principle of desire which presupposes an object of pleasure or pain,
something therefore that pleases or displeases, and the maxim of reason that we should pursue the former and avoid the
latter determines our actions as good relatively to our inclination, that is, good indirectly, i.e., relatively to a
different end to which they are means), and in that case these maxims can never be called laws, but may be called
rational practical precepts. The end itself, the pleasure that we seek, is in the latter case not a good but a welfare;
not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of sensation; but the use of the means thereto, that is,
the action, is nevertheless called good (because rational deliberation is required for it), not however, good
absolutely, but only relatively to our sensuous nature, with regard to its feelings of pleasure and displeasure; but
the will whose maxim is affected thereby is not a pure will; this is directed only to that in which pure reason by
itself can be practical.

This is the proper place to explain the paradox of method in a critique of practical reason, namely, that the
concept of good and evil must not be determined before the moral law (of which it seems as if it must be the
foundation), but only after it and by means of it. In fact, even if we did not know that the principle of morality is a
pure a priori law determining the will, yet, that we may not assume principles quite gratuitously, we must, at least at
first, leave it undecided, whether the will has merely empirical principles of determination, or whether it has not
also pure a priori principles; for it is contrary to all rules of philosophical method to assume as decided that which
is the very point in question. Supposing that we wished to begin with the concept of good, in order to deduce from it
the laws of the will, then this concept of an object (as a good) would at the same time assign to us this object as the
sole determining principle of the will. Now, since this concept had not any practical a priori law for its standard,
the criterion of good or evil could not be placed in anything but the agreement of the object with our feeling of
pleasure or pain; and the use of reason could only consist in determining in the first place this pleasure or pain in
connexion with all the sensations of my existence, and in the second place the means of securing to myself the object
of the pleasure. Now, as experience alone can decide what conforms to the feeling of pleasure, and by hypothesis the
practical law is to be based on this as a condition, it follows that the possibility of a priori practical laws would
be at once excluded, because it was imagined to be necessary first of all to find an object the concept of which, as a
good, should constitute the universal though empirical principle of determination of the will. But what it was
necessary to inquire first of all was whether there is not an a priori determining principle of the will (and this
could never be found anywhere but in a pure practical law, in so far as this law prescribes to maxims merely their form
without regard to an object). Since, however, we laid the foundation of all practical law in an object determined by
our conceptions of good and evil, whereas without a previous law that object could not be conceived by empirical
concepts, we have deprived ourselves beforehand of the possibility of even conceiving a pure practical law. On the
other hand, if we had first investigated the latter analytically, we should have found that it is not the concept of
good as an object that determines the moral law and makes it possible, but that, on the contrary, it is the moral law
that first determines the concept of good and makes it possible, so far as it deserves the name of good absolutely.

This remark, which only concerns the method of ultimate ethical inquiries, is of importance. It explains at once the
occasion of all the mistakes of philosophers with respect to the supreme principle of morals. For they sought for an
object of the will which they could make the matter and principle of a law (which consequently could not determine the
will directly, but by means of that object referred to the feeling of pleasure or pain; whereas they ought first to
have searched for a law that would determine the will a priori and directly, and afterwards determine the object in
accordance with the will). Now, whether they placed this object of pleasure, which was to supply the supreme conception
of goodness, in happiness, in perfection, in moral [feeling], or in the will of God, their principle in every case
implied heteronomy, and they must inevitably come upon empirical conditions of a moral law, since their object, which
was to be the immediate principle of the will, could not be called good or bad except in its immediate relation to
feeling, which is always empirical. It is only a formal law — that is, one which prescribes to reason nothing more than
the form of its universal legislation as the supreme condition of its maxims — that can be a priori a determining
principle of practical reason. The ancients avowed this error without concealment by directing all their moral
inquiries to the determination of the notion of the summum bonum, which they intended afterwards to make the
determining principle of the will in the moral law; whereas it is only far later, when the moral law has been first
established for itself, and shown to be the direct determining principle of the will, that this object can be presented
to the will, whose form is now determined a priori; and this we shall undertake in the Dialectic of the pure practical
reason. The moderns, with whom the question of the summum bonum has gone out of fashion, or at least seems to have
become a secondary matter, hide the same error under vague (expressions as in many other cases). It shows itself,
nevertheless, in their systems, as it always produces heteronomy of practical reason; and from this can never be
derived a moral law giving universal commands.

Now, since the notions of good and evil, as consequences of the a priori determination of the will, imply also a
pure practical principle, and therefore a causality of pure reason; hence they do not originally refer to objects (so
as to be, for instance, special modes of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in one consciousness)
like the pure concepts of the understanding or categories of reason in its theoretic employment; on the contrary, they
presuppose that objects are given; but they are all modes (modi) of a single category, namely, that of causality, the
determining principle of which consists in the rational conception of a law, which as a law of freedom reason gives to
itself, thereby a priori proving itself practical. However, as the actions on the one side come under a law which is
not a physical law, but a law of freedom, and consequently belong to the conduct of beings in the world of
intelligence, yet on the other side as events in the world of sense they belong to phenomena; hence the determinations
of a practical reason are only possible in reference to the latter and, therefore, in accordance with the categories of
the understanding; not indeed with a view to any theoretic employment of it, i.e., so as to bring the manifold of
(sensible) intuition under one consciousness a priori; but only to subject the manifold of desires to the unity of
consciousness of a practical reason, giving it commands in the moral law, i.e., to a pure will a priori.

These categories of freedom — for so we choose to call them in contrast to those theoretic categories which are
categories of physical nature — have an obvious advantage over the latter, inasmuch as the latter are only forms of
thought which designate objects in an indefinite manner by means of universal concept of every possible intuition; the
former, on the contrary, refer to the determination of a free elective will (to which indeed no exactly corresponding
intuition can be assigned, but which has as its foundation a pure practical a priori law, which is not the case with
any concepts belonging to the theoretic use of our cognitive faculties); hence, instead of the form of intuition (space
and time), which does not lie in reason itself, but has to be drawn from another source, namely, the sensibility, these
being elementary practical concepts have as their foundation the form of a pure will, which is given in reason and,
therefore, in the thinking faculty itself. From this it happens that as all precepts of pure practical reason have to
do only with the determination of the will, not with the physical conditions (of practical ability) of the execution of
one’s purpose, the practical a priori principles in relation to the supreme principle of freedom are at once
cognitions, and have not to wait for intuitions in order to acquire significance, and that for this remarkable reason,
because they themselves produce the reality of that to which they refer (the intention of the will), which is not the
case with theoretical concepts. Only we must be careful to observe that these categories only apply to the practical
reason; and thus they proceed in order from those which are as yet subject to sensible conditions and morally
indeterminate to those which are free from sensible conditions and determined merely by the moral law.

Table of the Categories of Freedom relatively to the Notions of Good and Evil.

Quantity.
Subjective, according to maxims (practical opinions of the individual)
Objective, according to principles (Precepts)
A priori both objective and subjective principles of freedom (laws)

Relation.
To personality To the condition of the person.
Reciprocal, of one person to the others of the others.

Modality.
The Permitted and the Forbidden
Duty and the contrary to duty.
Perfect and imperfect duty.

It will at once be observed that in this table freedom is considered as a sort of causality not subject to empirical
principles of determination, in regard to actions possible by it, which are phenomena in the world of sense, and that
consequently it is referred to the categories which concern its physical possibility, whilst yet each category is taken
so universally that the determining principle of that causality can be placed outside the world of sense in freedom as
a property of a being in the world of intelligence; and finally the categories of modality introduce the transition
from practical principles generally to those of morality, but only problematically. These can be established
dogmatically only by the moral law.

I add nothing further here in explanation of the present table, since it is intelligible enough of itself. A
division of this kind based on principles is very useful in any science, both for the sake of thoroughness and
intelligibility. Thus, for instance, we know from the preceding table and its first number what we must begin from in
practical inquiries; namely, from the maxims which every one founds on his own inclinations; the precepts which hold
for a species of rational beings so far as they agree in certain inclinations; and finally the law which holds for all
without regard to their inclinations, etc. In this way we survey the whole plan of what has to be done, every question
of practical philosophy that has to be answered, and also the order that is to be followed.

Of the Typic of the Pure Practical Judgement.

It is the notions of good and evil that first determine an object of the will. They themselves, however, are subject
to a practical rule of reason which, if it is pure reason, determines the will a priori relatively to its object. Now,
whether an action which is possible to us in the world of sense, comes under the rule or not, is a question to be
decided by the practical judgement, by which what is said in the rule universally (in abstracto) is applied to an
action in concreto. But since a practical rule of pure reason in the first place as practical concerns the existence of
an object, and in the second place as a practical rule of pure reason implies necessity as regards the existence of the
action and, therefore, is a practical law, not a physical law depending on empirical principles of determination, but a
law of freedom by which the will is to be determined independently on anything empirical (merely by the conception of a
law and its form), whereas all instances that can occur of possible actions can only be empirical, that is, belong to
the experience of physical nature; hence, it seems absurd to expect to find in the world of sense a case which, while
as such it depends only on the law of nature, yet admits of the application to it of a law of freedom, and to which we
can apply the supersensible idea of the morally good which is to be exhibited in it in concreto. Thus, the judgement of
the pure practical reason is subject to the same difficulties as that of the pure theoretical reason. The latter,
however, had means at hand of escaping from these difficulties, because, in regard to the theoretical employment,
intuitions were required to which pure concepts of the understanding could be applied, and such intuitions (though only
of objects of the senses) can be given a priori and, therefore, as far as regards the union of the manifold in them,
conforming to the pure a priori concepts of the understanding as schemata. On the other hand, the morally good is
something whose object is supersensible; for which, therefore, nothing corresponding can be found in any sensible
intuition. Judgement depending on laws of pure practical reason seems, therefore, to be subject to special difficulties
arising from this, that a law of freedom is to be applied to actions, which are events taking place in the world of
sense, and which, so far, belong to physical nature.

But here again is opened a favourable prospect for the pure practical judgement. When I subsume under a pure
practical law an action possible to me in the world of sense, I am not concerned with the possibility of the action as
an event in the world of sense. This is a matter that belongs to the decision of reason in its theoretic use according
to the law of causality, which is a pure concept of the understanding, for which reason has a schema in the sensible
intuition. Physical causality, or the condition under which it takes place, belongs to the physical concepts, the
schema of which is sketched by transcendental imagination. Here, however, we have to do, not with the schema of a case
that occurs according to laws, but with the schema of a law itself (if the word is allowable here), since the fact that
the will (not the action relatively to its effect) is determined by the law alone without any other principle, connects
the notion of causality with quite different conditions from those which constitute physical connection.

The physical law being a law to which the objects of sensible intuition, as such, are subject, must have a schema
corresponding to it — that is, a general procedure of the imagination (by which it exhibits a priori to the senses the
pure concept of the understanding which the law determines). But the law of freedom (that is, of a causality not
subject to sensible conditions), and consequently the concept of the unconditionally good, cannot have any intuition,
nor consequently any schema supplied to it for the purpose of its application in concreto. Consequently the moral law
has no faculty but the understanding to aid its application to physical objects (not the imagination); and the
understanding for the purposes of the judgement can provide for an idea of the reason, not a schema of the sensibility,
but a law, though only as to its form as law; such a law, however, as can be exhibited in concreto in objects of the
senses, and therefore a law of nature. We can therefore call this law the type of the moral law.

The rule of the judgement according to laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action
you propose were to take place by a law of the system of nature of which you were yourself a part, you could regard it
as possible by your own will. Everyone does, in fact, decide by this rule whether actions are morally good or evil.
Thus, people say: “If everyone permitted himself to deceive, when he thought it to his advantage; or thought himself
justified in shortening his life as soon as he was thoroughly weary of it; or looked with perfect indifference on the
necessity of others; and if you belonged to such an order of things, would you do so with the assent of your own will?”
Now everyone knows well that if he secretly allows himself to deceive, it does not follow that everyone else does so;
or if, unobserved, he is destitute of compassion, others would not necessarily be so to him; hence, this comparison of
the maxim of his actions with a universal law of nature is not the determining principle of his will. Such a law is,
nevertheless, a type of the estimation of the maxim on moral principles. If the maxim of the action is not such as to
stand the test of the form of a universal law of nature, then it is morally impossible. This is the judgement even of
common sense; for its ordinary judgements, even those of experience, are always based on the law of nature. It has it
therefore always at hand, only that in cases where causality from freedom is to be criticised, it makes that law of
nature only the type of a law of freedom, because, without something which it could use as an example in a case of
experience, it could not give the law of a pure practical reason its proper use in practice.

It is therefore allowable to use the system of the world of sense as the type of a supersensible system of things,
provided I do not transfer to the latter the intuitions, and what depends on them, but merely apply to it the form of
law in general (the notion of which occurs even in the commonest use of reason, but cannot be definitely known a priori
for any other purpose than the pure practical use of reason); for laws, as such, are so far identical, no matter from
what they derive their determining principles.

Further, since of all the supersensible absolutely nothing [is known] except freedom (through the moral law), and
this only so far as it is inseparably implied in that law, and moreover all supersensible objects to which reason might
lead us, following the guidance of that law, have still no reality for us, except for the purpose of that law, and for
the use of mere practical reason; and as reason is authorized and even compelled to use physical nature (in its pure
form as an object of the understanding) as the type of the judgement; hence, the present remark will serve to guard
against reckoning amongst concepts themselves that which belongs only to the typic of concepts. This, namely, as a
typic of the judgement, guards against the empiricism of practical reason, which founds the practical notions of good
and evil merely on experienced consequences (so-called happiness). No doubt happiness and the infinite advantages which
would result from a will determined by self-love, if this will at the same time erected itself into a universal law of
nature, may certainly serve as a perfectly suitable type of the morally good, but it is not identical with it. The same
typic guards also against the mysticism of practical reason, which turns what served only as a symbol into a schema,
that is, proposes to provide for the moral concepts actual intuitions, which, however, are not sensible (intuitions of
an invisible Kingdom of God), and thus plunges into the transcendent. What is befitting the use of the moral concepts
is only the rationalism of the judgement, which takes from the sensible system of nature only what pure reason can also
conceive of itself, that is, conformity to law, and transfers into the supersensible nothing but what can conversely be
actually exhibited by actions in the world of sense according to the formal rule of a law of nature. However, the
caution against empiricism of practical reason is much more important; for mysticism is quite reconcilable with the
purity and sublimity of the moral law, and, besides, it is not very natural or agreeable to common habits of thought to
strain one’s imagination to supersensible intuitions; and hence the danger on this side is not so general. Empiricism,
on the contrary, cuts up at the roots the morality of intentions (in which, and not in actions only, consists the high
worth that men can and ought to give to themselves), and substitutes for duty something quite different, namely, an
empirical interest, with which the inclinations generally are secretly leagued; and empiricism, moreover, being on this
account allied with all the inclinations which (no matter what fashion they put on) degrade humanity when they are
raised to the dignity of a supreme practical principle; and as these, nevertheless, are so favourable to everyone’s
feelings, it is for that reason much more dangerous than mysticism, which can never constitute a lasting condition of
any great number of persons.

Chapter III. Of the Motives of Pure Practical Reason.

What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law should directly determine the
will. If the determination of the will takes place in conformity indeed to the moral law, but only by means of a
feeling, no matter of what kind, which has to be presupposed in order that the law may be sufficient to determine the
will, and therefore not for the sake of the law, then the action will possess legality, but not morality. Now, if we
understand by motive (elater animi) the subjective ground of determination of the will of a being whose reason does not
necessarily conform to the objective law, by virtue of its own nature, then it will follow, first, that not motives can
be attributed to the Divine will, and that the motives of the human will (as well as that of every created rational
being) can never be anything else than the moral law, and consequently that the objective principle of determination
must always and alone be also the subjectively sufficient determining principle of the action, if this is not merely to
fulfil the letter of the law, without containing its spirit.10

10 We may say of every action that conforms to the law, but is
not done for the sake of the law, that it is morally good in the letter, not in the spirit (the intention).

Since, then, for the purpose of giving the moral law influence over the will, we must not seek for any other motives
that might enable us to dispense with the motive of the law itself, because that would produce mere hypocrisy, without
consistency; and it is even dangerous to allow other motives (for instance, that of interest) even to cooperate along
with the moral law; hence nothing is left us but to determine carefully in what way the moral law becomes a motive, and
what effect this has upon the faculty of desire. For as to the question how a law can be directly and of itself a
determining principle of the will (which is the essence of morality), this is, for human reason, an insoluble problem
and identical with the question: how a free will is possible. Therefore what we have to show a priori is not why the
moral law in itself supplies a motive, but what effect it, as such, produces (or, more correctly speaking, must
produce) on the mind.

The essential point in every determination of the will by the moral law is that being a free will it is determined
simply by the moral law, not only without the cooperation of sensible impulses, but even to the rejection of all such,
and to the checking of all inclinations so far as they might be opposed to that law. So far, then, the effect of the
moral law as a motive is only negative, and this motive can be known a priori to be such. For all inclination and every
sensible impulse is founded on feeling, and the negative effect produced on feeling (by the check on the inclinations)
is itself feeling; consequently, we can see a priori that the moral law, as a determining principle of the will, must
by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling which may be called pain; and in this we have the first, perhaps
the only, instance in which we are able from a priori considerations to determine the relation of a cognition (in this
case of pure practical reason) to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. All the inclinations together (which can be
reduced to a tolerable system, in which case their satisfaction is called happiness) constitute self-regard
(solipsismus). This is either the self-love that consists in an excessive fondness for oneself (philautia), or
satisfaction with oneself (arrogantia). The former is called particularly selfishness; the latter self-conceit. Pure
practical reason only checks selfishness, looking on it as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, so far
as to limit it to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. But self-conceit
reason strikes down altogether, since all claims to self-esteem which precede agreement with the moral law are vain and
unjustifiable, for the certainty of a state of mind that coincides with this law is the first condition of personal
worth (as we shall presently show more clearly), and prior to this conformity any pretension to worth is false and
unlawful. Now the propensity to self-esteem is one of the inclinations which the moral law checks, inasmuch as that
esteem rests only on morality. Therefore the moral law breaks down self-conceit. But as this law is something positive
in itself, namely, the form of an intellectual causality, that is, of freedom, it must be an object of respect; for, by
opposing the subjective antagonism of the inclinations, it weakens self-conceit; and since it even breaks down, that
is, humiliates, this conceit, it is an object of the highest respect and, consequently, is the foundation of a positive
feeling which is not of empirical origin, but is known a priori. Therefore respect for the moral law is a feeling which
is produced by an intellectual cause, and this feeling is the only one that we know quite a priori and the necessity of
which we can perceive.

In the preceding chapter we have seen that everything that presents itself as an object of the will prior to the
moral law is by that law itself, which is the supreme condition of practical reason, excluded from the determining
principles of the will which we have called the unconditionally good; and that the mere practical form which consists
in the adaptation of the maxims to universal legislation first determines what is good in itself and absolutely, and is
the basis of the maxims of a pure will, which alone is good in every respect. However, we find that our nature as
sensible beings is such that the matter of desire (objects of inclination, whether of hope or fear) first presents
itself to us; and our pathologically affected self, although it is in its maxims quite unfit for universal legislation;
yet, just as if it constituted our entire self, strives to put its pretensions forward first, and to have them
acknowledged as the first and original. This propensity to make ourselves in the subjective determining principles of
our choice serve as the objective determining principle of the will generally may be called self-love; and if this
pretends to be legislative as an unconditional practical principle it may be called self-conceit. Now the moral law,
which alone is truly objective (namely, in every respect), entirely excludes the influence of self-love on the supreme
practical principle, and indefinitely checks the self-conceit that prescribes the subjective conditions of the former
as laws. Now whatever checks our self-conceit in our own judgement humiliates; therefore the moral law inevitably
humbles every man when he compares with it the physical propensities of his nature. That, the idea of which as a
determining principle of our will humbles us in our self-consciousness, awakes respect for itself, so far as it is
itself positive and a determining principle. Therefore the moral law is even subjectively a cause of respect. Now since
everything that enters into self-love belongs to inclination, and all inclination rests on feelings, and consequently
whatever checks all the feelings together in self-love has necessarily, by this very circumstance, an influence on
feeling; hence we comprehend how it is possible to perceive a priori that the moral law can produce an effect on
feeling, in that it excludes the inclinations and the propensity to make them the supreme practical condition, i.e.,
self-love, from all participation in the supreme legislation. This effect is on one side merely negative, but on the
other side, relatively to the restricting principle of pure practical reason, it is positive. No special kind of
feeling need be assumed for this under the name of a practical or moral feeling as antecedent to the moral law and
serving as its foundation.

The negative effect on feeling (unpleasantness) is pathological, like every influence on feeling and like every
feeling generally. But as an effect of the consciousness of the moral law, and consequently in relation to a
supersensible cause, namely, the subject of pure practical reason which is the supreme lawgiver, this feeling of a
rational being affected by inclinations is called humiliation (intellectual self-depreciation); but with reference to
the positive source of this humiliation, the law, it is respect for it. There is indeed no feeling for this law; but
inasmuch as it removes the resistance out of the way, this removal of an obstacle is, in the judgement of reason,
esteemed equivalent to a positive help to its causality. Therefore this feeling may also be called a feeling of respect
for the moral law, and for both reasons together a moral feeling.

While the moral law, therefore, is a formal determining principle of action by practical pure reason, and is
moreover a material though only objective determining principle of the objects of action as called good and evil, it is
also a subjective determining principle, that is, a motive to this action, inasmuch as it has influence on the morality
of the subject and produces a feeling conducive to the influence of the law on the will. There is here in the subject
no antecedent feeling tending to morality. For this is impossible, since every feeling is sensible, and the motive of
moral intention must be free from all sensible conditions. On the contrary, while the sensible feeling which is at the
bottom of all our inclinations is the condition of that impression which we call respect, the cause that determines it
lies in the pure practical reason; and this impression therefore, on account of its origin, must be called, not a
pathological but a practical effect. For by the fact that the conception of the moral law deprives self-love of its
influence, and self-conceit of its illusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the
conception of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of the sensibility; and thus, by removing the
counterpoise, it gives relatively greater weight to the law in the judgement of reason (in the case of a will affected
by the aforesaid impulses). Thus the respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but is morality itself
subjectively considered as a motive, inasmuch as pure practical reason, by rejecting all the rival pretensions of
selflove, gives authority to the law, which now alone has influence. Now it is to be observed that as respect is an
effect on feeling, and therefore on the sensibility, of a rational being, it presupposes this sensibility, and
therefore also the finiteness of such beings on whom the moral law imposes respect; and that respect for the law cannot
be attributed to a supreme being, or to any being free from all sensibility, in whom, therefore, this sensibility
cannot be an obstacle to practical reason.

This feeling (which we call the moral feeling) is therefore produced simply by reason. It does not serve for the
estimation of actions nor for the foundation of the objective moral law itself, but merely as a motive to make this of
itself a maxim. But what name could we more suitably apply to this singular feeling which cannot be compared to any
pathological feeling? It is of such a peculiar kind that it seems to be at the disposal of reason only, and that pure
practical reason.

Respect applies always to persons only — not to things. The latter may arouse inclination, and if they are animals
(e.g., horses, dogs, etc.), even love or fear, like the sea, a volcano, a beast of prey; but never respect. Something
that comes nearer to this feeling is admiration, and this, as an affection, astonishment, can apply to things also,
e.g., lofty mountains, the magnitude, number, and distance of the heavenly bodies, the strength and swiftness of many
animals, etc. But all this is not respect. A man also may be an object to me of love, fear, or admiration, even to
astonishment, and yet not be an object of respect. His jocose humour, his courage and strength, his power from the rank
he has amongst others, may inspire me with sentiments of this kind, but still inner respect for him is wanting.
Fontenelle says, “I bow before a great man, but my mind does not bow.” I would add, before an humble plain man, in whom
I perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than I am conscious of in myself — my mind bows whether I choose
it or not, and though I bear my head never so high that he may not forget my superior rank. Why is this? Because his
example exhibits to me a law that humbles my self-conceit when I compare it with my conduct: a law, the practicability
of obedience to which I see proved by fact before my eyes. Now, I may even be conscious of a like degree of
uprightness, and yet the respect remains. For since in man all good is defective, the law made visible by an example
still humbles my pride, my standard being furnished by a man whose imperfections, whatever they may be, are not known
to me as my own are, and who therefore appears to me in a more favourable light. Respect is a tribute which we cannot
refuse to merit, whether we will or not; we may indeed outwardly withhold it, but we cannot help feeling it
inwardly.

Respect is so far from being a feeling of pleasure that we only reluctantly give way to it as regards a man. We try
to find out something that may lighten the burden of it, some fault to compensate us for the humiliation which such an
example causes. Even the dead are not always secure from this criticism, especially if their example appears
inimitable. Even the moral law itself in its solemn majesty is exposed to this endeavour to save oneself from yielding
it respect. Can it be thought that it is for any other reason that we are so ready to reduce it to the level of our
familiar inclination, or that it is for any other reason that we all take such trouble to make it out to be the chosen
precept of our own interest well understood, but that we want to be free from the deterrent respect which shows us our
own unworthiness with such severity? Nevertheless, on the other hand, so little is there pain in it that if once one
has laid aside self-conceit and allowed practical influence to that respect, he can never be satisfied with
contemplating the majesty of this law, and the soul believes itself elevated in proportion as it sees the holy law
elevated above it and its frail nature. No doubt great talents and activity proportioned to them may also occasion
respect or an analogous feeling. It is very proper to yield it to them, and then it appears as if this sentiment were
the same thing as admiration. But if we look closer we shall observe that it is always uncertain how much of the
ability is due to native talent, and how much to diligence in cultivating it. Reason represents it to us as probably
the fruit of cultivation, and therefore as meritorious, and this notably reduces our self-conceit, and either casts a
reproach on us or urges us to follow such an example in the way that is suitable to us. This respect, then, which we
show to such a person (properly speaking, to the law that his example exhibits) is not mere admiration; and this is
confirmed also by the fact that when the common run of admirers think they have learned from any source the badness of
such a man’s character (for instance Voltaire’s) they give up all respect for him; whereas the true scholar still feels
it at least with regard to his talents, because he is himself engaged in a business and a vocation which make imitation
of such a man in some degree a law.

Respect for the moral law is, therefore, the only and the undoubted moral motive, and this feeling is directed to no
object, except on the ground of this law. The moral law first determines the will objectively and directly in the
judgement of reason; and freedom, whose causality can be determined only by the law, consists just in this, that it
restricts all inclinations, and consequently self-esteem, by the condition of obedience to its pure law. This
restriction now has an effect on feeling, and produces the impression of displeasure which can be known a priori from
the moral law. Since it is so far only a negative effect which, arising from the influence of pure practical reason,
checks the activity of the subject, so far as it is determined by inclinations, and hence checks the opinion of his
personal worth (which, in the absence of agreement with the moral law, is reduced to nothing); hence, the effect of
this law on feeling is merely humiliation. We can, therefore, perceive this a priori, but cannot know by it the force
of the pure practical law as a motive, but only the resistance to motives of the sensibility. But since the same law is
objectively, that is, in the conception of pure reason, an immediate principle of determination of the will, and
consequently this humiliation takes place only relatively to the purity of the law; hence, the lowering of the
pretensions of moral self-esteem, that is, humiliation on the sensible side, is an elevation of the moral, i.e.,
practical, esteem for the law itself on the intellectual side; in a word, it is respect for the law, and therefore, as
its cause is intellectual, a positive feeling which can be known a priori. For whatever diminishes the obstacles to an
activity furthers this activity itself. Now the recognition of the moral law is the consciousness of an activity of
practical reason from objective principles, which only fails to reveal its effect in actions because subjective
(pathological) causes hinder it. Respect for the moral law then must be regarded as a positive, though indirect, effect
of it on feeling, inasmuch as this respect weakens the impeding influence of inclinations by humiliating selfesteem;
and hence also as a subjective principle of activity, that is, as a motive to obedience to the law, and as a principle
of the maxims of a life conformable to it. From the notion of a motive arises that of an interest, which can never be
attributed to any being unless it possesses reason, and which signifies a motive of the will in so far as it is
conceived by the reason. Since in a morally good will the law itself must be the motive, the moral interest is a pure
interest of practical reason alone, independent of sense. On the notion of an interest is based that of a maxim. This,
therefore, is morally good only in case it rests simply on the interest taken in obedience to the law. All three
notions, however, that of a motive, of an interest, and of a maxim, can be applied only to finite beings. For they all
suppose a limitation of the nature of the being, in that the subjective character of his choice does not of itself
agree with the objective law of a practical reason; they suppose that the being requires to be impelled to action by
something, because an internal obstacle opposes itself. Therefore they cannot be applied to the Divine will.

There is something so singular in the unbounded esteem for the pure moral law, apart from all advantage, as it is
presented for our obedience by practical reason, the voice of which makes even the boldest sinner tremble and compels
him to hide himself from it, that we cannot wonder if we find this influence of a mere intellectual idea on the
feelings quite incomprehensible to speculative reason and have to be satisfied with seeing so much of this a priori
that such a feeling is inseparably connected with the conception of the moral law in every finite rational being. If
this feeling of respect were pathological, and therefore were a feeling of pleasure based on the inner sense, it would
be in vain to try to discover a connection of it with any idea a priori. But [it] is a feeling that applies merely to
what is practical, and depends on the conception of a law, simply as to its form, not on account of any object, and
therefore cannot be reckoned either as pleasure or pain, and yet produces an interest in obedience to the law, which we
call the moral interest, just as the capacity of taking such an interest in the law (or respect for the moral law
itself) is properly the moral feeling.

The consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law, yet combined with an inevitable constraint put upon
all inclinations, though only by our own reason, is respect for the law. The law that demands this respect and inspires
it is clearly no other than the moral (for no other precludes all inclinations from exercising any direct influence on
the will). An action which is objectively practical according to this law, to the exclusion of every determining
principle of inclination, is duty, and this by reason of that exclusion includes in its concept practical obligation,
that is, a determination to actions, however reluctantly they may be done. The feeling that arises from the
consciousness of this obligation is not pathological, as would be a feeling produced by an object of the senses, but
practical only, that is, it is made possible by a preceding (objective) determination of the will and a causality of
the reason. As submission to the law, therefore, that is, as a command (announcing constraint for the sensibly affected
subject), it contains in it no pleasure, but on the contrary, so far, pain in the action. On the other hand, however,
as this constraint is exercised merely by the legislation of our own reason, it also contains something elevating, and
this subjective effect on feeling, inasmuch as pure practical reason is the sole cause of it, may be called in this
respect self-approbation, since we recognize ourselves as determined thereto solely by the law without any interest,
and are now conscious of a quite different interest subjectively produced thereby, and which is purely practical and
free; and our taking this interest in an action of duty is not suggested by any inclination, but is commanded and
actually brought about by reason through the practical law; whence this feeling obtains a special name, that of
respect.

The notion of duty, therefore, requires in the action, objectively, agreement with the law, and, subjectively in its
maxim, that respect for the law shall be the sole mode in which the will is determined thereby. And on this rests the
distinction between the consciousness of having acted according to duty and from duty, that is, from respect for the
law. The former (legality) is possible even if inclinations have been the determining principles of the will; but the
latter (morality), moral worth, can be placed only in this, that the action is done from duty, that is, simply for the
sake of the law.11

11 If we examine accurately the notion of respect for persons
as it has been already laid down, we shall perceive that it always rests on the consciousness of a duty which an
example shows us, and that respect, therefore. can never have any but a moral ground, and that it is very good and
even, in a psychological point of view, very useful for the knowledge of mankind, that whenever we use this expression
we should attend to this secret and marvellous, yet often recurring, regard which men in their judgement pay to the
moral law.

It is of the greatest importance to attend with the utmost exactness in all moral judgements to the subjective
principle of all maxims, that all the morality of actions may be placed in the necessity of acting from duty and from
respect for the law, not from love and inclination for that which the actions are to produce. For men and all created
rational beings moral necessity is constraint, that is obligation, and every action based on it is to be conceived as a
duty, not as a proceeding previously pleasing, or likely to be pleasing to us of our own accord. As if indeed we could
ever bring it about that without respect for the law, which implies fear, or at least apprehension of transgression, we
of ourselves, like the independent Deity, could ever come into possession of holiness of will by the coincidence of our
will with the pure moral law becoming as it were part of our nature, never to be shaken (in which case the law would
cease to be a command for us, as we could never be tempted to be untrue to it).

The moral law is in fact for the will of a perfect being a law of holiness, but for the will of every finite
rational being a law of duty, of moral constraint, and of the determination of its actions by respect for this law and
reverence for its duty. No other subjective principle must be assumed as a motive, else while the action might chance
to be such as the law prescribes, yet, as does not proceed from duty, the intention, which is the thing properly in
question in this legislation, is not moral.

It is a very beautiful thing to do good to men from love to them and from sympathetic good will, or to be just from
love of order; but this is not yet the true moral maxim of our conduct which is suitable to our position amongst
rational beings as men, when we pretend with fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like
volunteers, and, as if we were independent on the command, to want to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need
no command to do. We stand under a discipline of reason and in all our maxims must not forget our subjection to it, nor
withdraw anything therefrom, or by an egotistic presumption diminish aught of the authority of the law (although our
own reason gives it) so as to set the determining principle of our will, even though the law be conformed to, anywhere
else but in the law itself and in respect for this law. Duty and obligation are the only names that we must give to our
relation to the moral law. We are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom rendered possible by freedom, and
presented to us by reason as an object of respect; but yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign, and to mistake our
inferior position as creatures, and presumptuously to reject the authority of the moral law, is already to revolt from
it in spirit, even though the letter of it is fulfilled.

With this agrees very well the possibility of such a command as: Love God above everything, and thy neighbour as
thyself.12 For as a command it requires respect for a law which commands love
and does not leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle. Love to God, however, considered as an
inclination (pathological love), is impossible, for He is not an object of the senses. The same affection towards men
is possible no doubt, but cannot be commanded, for it is not in the power of any man to love anyone at command;
therefore it is only practical love that is meant in that pith of all laws. To love God means, in this sense, to like
to do His commandments; to love one’s neighbour means to like to practise all duties towards him. But the command that
makes this a rule cannot command us to have this disposition in actions conformed to duty, but only to endeavour after
it. For a command to like to do a thing is in itself contradictory, because if we already know of ourselves what we are
bound to do, and if further we are conscious of liking to do it, a command would be quite needless; and if we do it not
willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a command that makes this respect the motive of our maxim would
directly counteract the disposition commanded. That law of all laws, therefore, like all the moral precepts of the
Gospel, exhibits the moral disposition in all its perfection, in which, viewed as an ideal of holiness, it is not
attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should strive to approach, and in an uninterrupted but
infinite progress become like to. In fact, if a rational creature could ever reach this point, that he thoroughly likes
to do all moral laws, this would mean that there does not exist in him even the possibility of a desire that would
tempt him to deviate from them; for to overcome such a desire always costs the subject some sacrifice and therefore
requires self-compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that one does not quite like to do; and no creature
can ever reach this stage of moral disposition. For, being a creature, and therefore always dependent with respect to
what he requires for complete satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and inclinations, and as these rest
on physical causes, they can never of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are quite different;
and therefore they make it necessary to found the mental disposition of one’s maxims on moral obligation, not on ready
inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law, even though one may not like it; not on love, which
apprehends no inward reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this latter, namely, love to the law (which
would then cease to be a command, and then morality, which would have passed subjectively into holiness, would cease to
be virtue) must be the constant though unattainable goal of his endeavours. For in the case of what we highly esteem,
but yet (on account of the consciousness of our weakness) dread, the increased facility of satisfying it changes the
most reverential awe into inclination, and respect into love; at least this would be the perfection of a disposition
devoted to the law, if it were possible for a creature to attain it.

12 This law is in striking contrast with the principle of
private happiness which some make the supreme principle of morality. This would be expressed thus: Love thyself above
everything, and God and thy neighbour for thine own sake.

This reflection is intended not so much to clear up the evangelical command just cited, in order to prevent
religious fanaticism in regard to love of God, but to define accurately the moral disposition with regard directly to
our duties towards men, and to check, or if possible prevent, a merely moral fanaticism which infects many persons. The
stage of morality on which man (and, as far as we can see, every rational creature) stands is respect for the moral
law. The disposition that he ought to have in obeying this is to obey it from duty, not from spontaneous inclination,
or from an endeavour taken up from liking and unbidden; and this proper moral condition in which he can always be is
virtue, that is, moral disposition militant, and not holiness in the fancied possession of a perfect purity of the
disposition of the will. It is nothing but moral fanaticism and exaggerated self-conceit that is infused into the mind
by exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous, by which men are led into the delusion that it is not
duty, that is, respect for the law, whose yoke (an easy yoke indeed, because reason itself imposes it on us) they must
bear, whether they like it or not, that constitutes the determining principle of their actions, and which always
humbles them while they obey it; fancying that those actions are expected from them, not from duty, but as pure merit.
For not only would they, in imitating such deeds from such a principle, not have fulfilled the spirit of the law in the
least, which consists not in the legality of the action (without regard to principle), but in the subjection of the
mind to the law; not only do they make the motives pathological (seated in sympathy or self-love), not moral (in the
law), but they produce in this way a vain, high-flying, fantastic way of thinking, flattering themselves with a
spontaneous goodness of heart that needs neither spur nor bridle, for which no command is needed, and thereby
forgetting their obligation, which they ought to think of rather than merit. Indeed actions of others which are done
with great sacrifice, and merely for the sake of duty, may be praised as noble and sublime, but only so far as there
are traces which suggest that they were done wholly out of respect for duty and not from excited feelings. If these,
however, are set before anyone as examples to be imitated, respect for duty (which is the only true moral feeling) must
be employed as the motive — this severe holy precept which never allows our vain self-love to dally with pathological
impulses (however analogous they may be to morality), and to take a pride in meritorious worth. Now if we search we
shall find for all actions that are worthy of praise a law of duty which commands, and does not leave us to choose what
may be agreeable to our inclinations. This is the only way of representing things that can give a moral training to the
soul, because it alone is capable of solid and accurately defined principles.

If fanaticism in its most general sense is a deliberate over stepping of the limits of human reason, then moral
fanaticism is such an over stepping of the bounds that practical pure reason sets to mankind, in that it forbids us to
place the subjective determining principle of correct actions, that is, their moral motive, in anything but the law
itself, or to place the disposition which is thereby brought into the maxims in anything but respect for this law, and
hence commands us to take as the supreme vital principle of all morality in men the thought of duty, which strikes down
all arrogance as well as vain self-love.

If this is so, it is not only writers of romance or sentimental educators (although they may be zealous opponents of
sentimentalism), but sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the severest of all, the Stoics, that have brought in moral
fanaticism instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of
the former of an insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of the moral teaching of the Gospel,
that it first, by the purity of its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the limitations of
finite beings, brought all the good conduct of men under the discipline of a duty plainly set before their eyes, which
does not permit them to indulge in dreams of imaginary moral perfections; and that it also set the bounds of humility
(that is, self-knowledge) to self-conceit as well as to self-love, both which are ready to mistake their limits.

Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and
yet seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse natural aversion or terror, but merely holdest
forth a law which of itself finds entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always
obedience), a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it; what origin is
there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the
inclinations; a root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the only worth which men can give
themselves?

It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself (as a part of the world of sense), a power
which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a world which at the same
time commands the whole sensible world, and with it the empirically determinable existence of man in time, as well as
the sum total of all ends (which totality alone suits such unconditional practical laws as the moral). This power is
nothing but personality, that is, freedom and independence on the mechanism of nature, yet, regarded also as a faculty
of a being which is subject to special laws, namely, pure practical laws given by its own reason; so that the person as
belonging to the sensible world is subject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible]
world. It is then not to be wondered at that man, as belonging to both worlds, must regard his own nature in reference
to its second and highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the highest respect.

On this origin are founded many expressions which designate the worth of objects according to moral ideas. The moral
law is holy (inviolable). Man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard humanity in his own person as holy. In all
creation every thing one chooses and over which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man alone, and with him
every rational creature, is an end in himself. By virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the moral
law, which is holy. Just for this reason every will, even every person’s own individual will, in relation to itself, is
restricted to the condition of agreement with the autonomy of the rational being, that is to say, that it is not to be
subject to any purpose which cannot accord with a law which might arise from the will of the passive subject himself;
the latter is, therefore, never to be employed merely as means, but as itself also, concurrently, an end. We justly
attribute this condition even to the Divine will, with regard to the rational beings in the world, which are His
creatures, since it rests on their personality, by which alone they are ends in themselves.

This respect-inspiring idea of personality which sets before our eyes the sublimity of our nature (in its higher
aspect), while at the same time it shows us the want of accord of our conduct with it and thereby strikes down
self-conceit, is even natural to the commonest reason and easily observed. Has not every even moderately honourable man
sometimes found that, where by an otherwise inoffensive lie he might either have withdrawn himself from an unpleasant
business, or even have procured some advantages for a loved and well-deserving friend, he has avoided it solely lest he
should despise himself secretly in his own eyes? When an upright man is in the greatest distress, which he might have
avoided if he could only have disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has maintained
humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his
own sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? This consolation is not happiness, it is not even the
smallest part of it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would, perhaps, even desire a life in such
circumstances. But he lives, and he cannot endure that he should be in his own eyes unworthy of life. This inward peace
is therefore merely negative as regards what can make life pleasant; it is, in fact, only the escaping the danger of
sinking in personal worth, after everything else that is valuable has been lost. It is the effect of a respect for
something quite different from life, something in comparison and contrast with which life with all its enjoyment has no
value. He still lives only because it is his duty, not because he finds anything pleasant in life.

Such is the nature of the true motive of pure practical reason; it is no other than the pure moral law itself,
inasmuch as it makes us conscious of the sublimity of our own supersensible existence and subjectively produces respect
for their higher nature in men who are also conscious of their sensible existence and of the consequent dependence of
their pathologically very susceptible nature. Now with this motive may be combined so many charms and satisfactions of
life that even on this account alone the most prudent choice of a rational Epicurean reflecting on the greatest
advantage of life would declare itself on the side of moral conduct, and it may even be advisable to join this prospect
of a cheerful enjoyment of life with that supreme motive which is already sufficient of itself; but only as a
counterpoise to the attractions which vice does not fail to exhibit on the opposite side, and not so as, even in the
smallest degree, to place in this the proper moving power when duty is in question. For that would be just the same as
to wish to taint the purity of the moral disposition in its source. The majesty of duty has nothing to do with
enjoyment of life; it has its special law and its special tribunal, and though the two should be never so well shaken
together to be given well mixed, like medicine, to the sick soul, yet they will soon separate of themselves; and if
they do not, the former will not act; and although physical life might gain somewhat in force, the moral life would
fade away irrecoverably.

Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.

By the critical examination of a science, or of a portion of it, which constitutes a system by itself, I understand
the inquiry and proof why it must have this and no other systematic form, when we compare it with another system which
is based on a similar faculty of knowledge. Now practical and speculative reason are based on the same faculty, so far
as both are pure reason. Therefore the difference in their systematic form must be determined by the comparison of
both, and the ground of this must be assigned.

The Analytic of pure theoretic reason had to do with the knowledge of such objects as may have been given to the
understanding, and was obliged therefore to begin from intuition and consequently (as this is always sensible) from
sensibility; and only after that could advance to concepts (of the objects of this intuition), and could only end with
principles after both these had preceded. On the contrary, since practical reason has not to do with objects so as to
know them, but with its own faculty of realizing them (in accordance with the knowledge of them), that is, with a will
which is a causality, inasmuch as reason contains its determining principle; since, consequently, it has not to furnish
an object of intuition, but as practical reason has to furnish only a law (because the notion of causality always
implies the reference to a law which determines the existence of the many in relation to one another); hence a critical
examination of the Analytic of reason, if this is to be practical reason (and this is properly the problem), must begin
with the possibility of practical principles a priori. Only after that can it proceed to concepts of the objects of a
practical reason, namely, those of absolute good and evil, in order to assign them in accordance with those principles
(for prior to those principles they cannot possibly be given as good and evil by any faculty of knowledge), and only
then could the section be concluded with the last chapter, that, namely, which treats of the relation of the pure
practical reason to the sensibility and of its necessary influence thereon, which is a priori cognisable, that is, of
the moral sentiment. Thus the Analytic of the practical pure reason has the whole extent of the conditions of its use
in common with the theoretical, but in reverse order. The Analytic of pure theoretic reason was divided into
transcendental Aesthetic and transcendental Logic, that of the practical reversely into Logic and Aesthetic of pure
practical reason (if I may, for the sake of analogy merely, use these designations, which are not quite suitable). This
logic again was there divided into the Analytic of concepts and that of principles: here into that of principles and
concepts. The Aesthetic also had in the former case two parts, on account of the two kinds of sensible intuition; here
the sensibility is not considered as a capacity of intuition at all, but merely as feeling (which can be a subjective
ground of desire), and in regard to it pure practical reason admits no further division.

It is also easy to see the reason why this division into two parts with its subdivision was not actually adopted
here (as one might have been induced to attempt by the example of the former critique). For since it is pure reason
that is here considered in its practical use, and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles, and not from
empirical principles of determination, hence the division of the analytic of pure practical reason must resemble that
of a syllogism; namely, proceeding from the universal in the major premiss (the moral principle), through a minor
premiss containing a subsumption of possible actions (as good or evil) under the former, to the conclusion, namely, the
subjective determination of the will (an interest in the possible practical good, and in the maxim founded on it). He
who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the positions occurring in the Analytic will take pleasure in
such comparisons; for they justly suggest the expectation that we may perhaps some day be able to discern the unity of
the whole faculty of reason (theoretical as well as practical) and be able to derive all from one principle, which, is
what human reason inevitably demands, as it finds complete satisfaction only in a perfectly systematic unity of its
knowledge.

If now we consider also the contents of the knowledge that we can have of a pure practical reason, and by means of
it, as shown by the Analytic, we find, along with a remarkable analogy between it and the theoretical, no less
remarkable differences. As regards the theoretical, the faculty of a pure rational cognition a priori could be easily
and evidently proved by examples from sciences (in which, as they put their principles to the test in so many ways by
methodical use, there is not so much reason as in common knowledge to fear a secret mixture of empirical principles of
cognition). But, that pure reason without the admixture of any empirical principle is practical of itself, this could
only be shown from the commonest practical use of reason, by verifying the fact, that every man’s natural reason
acknowledges the supreme practical principle as the supreme law of his will — a law completely a priori and not
depending on any sensible data. It was necessary first to establish and verify the purity of its origin, even in the
judgement of this common reason, before science could take it in hand to make use of it, as a fact, that is, prior to
all disputation about its possibility, and all the consequences that may be drawn from it. But this circumstance may be
readily explained from what has just been said; because practical pure reason must necessarily begin with principles,
which therefore must be the first data, the foundation of all science, and cannot be derived from it. It was possible
to effect this verification of moral principles as principles of a pure reason quite well, and with sufficient
certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might
slip into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain
which necessarily attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason positively refuses to admit this
feeling into its principle as a condition. The heterogeneity of the determining principles (the empirical and rational)
is clearly detected by this resistance of a practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination, and
by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the
contrary, is produced by this as a constraint, namely, by the feeling of a respect such as no man has for inclinations
of whatever kind but for the law only; and it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner that even the most
uninstructed cannot fail to see at once in an example presented to him, that empirical principles of volition may
indeed urge him to follow their attractions, but that he can never be expected to obey anything but the pure practical
law of reason alone.

The distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine of morality, in the former of which empirical
principles constitute the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form the smallest part of it, is the first
and most important office of the Analytic of pure practical reason; and it must proceed in it with as much exactness
and, so to speak, scrupulousness, as any geometer in his work. The philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to
contend with here (as always in rational cognition by means of concepts merely without construction), because he cannot
take any intuition as a foundation (for a pure noumenon). He has, however, this advantage that, like the chemist, he
can at any time make an experiment with every man’s practical reason for the purpose of distinguishing the moral (pure)
principle of determination from the empirical; namely, by adding the moral law (as a determining principle) to the
empirically affected will (e.g., that of the man who would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby). It
is as if the analyst added alkali to a solution of lime in hydrochloric acid, the acid at once forsakes the lime,
combines with the alkali, and the lime is precipitated. Just in the same way, if to a man who is otherwise honest (or
who for this occasion places himself only in thought in the position of an honest man), we present the moral law by
which he recognises the worthlessness of the liar, his practical reason (in forming a judgement of what ought to be
done) at once forsakes the advantage, combines with that which maintains in him respect for his own person
(truthfulness), and the advantage after it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason (which is
altogether on the side of duty) is easily weighed by everyone, so that it can enter into combination with reason in
other cases, only not where it could be opposed to the moral law, which reason never forsakes, but most closely unites
itself with.

But it does not follow that this distinction between the principle of happiness and that of morality is an
opposition between them, and pure practical reason does not require that we should renounce all claim to happiness, but
only that the moment duty is in question we should take no account of happiness. It may even in certain respects be a
duty to provide for happiness; partly, because (including skill, wealth, riches) it contains means for the fulfilment
of our duty; partly, because the absence of it (e.g., poverty) implies temptations to transgress our duty. But it can
never be an immediate duty to promote our happiness, still less can it be the principle of all duty. Now, as all
determining principles of the will, except the law of pure practical reason alone (the moral law), are all empirical
and, therefore, as such, belong to the principle of happiness, they must all be kept apart from the supreme principle
of morality and never be incorporated with it as a condition; since this would be to destroy all moral worth just as
much as any empirical admixture with geometrical principles would destroy the certainty of mathematical evidence, which
in Plato’s opinion is the most excellent thing in mathematics, even surpassing their utility.

Instead, however, of the deduction of the supreme principle of pure practical reason, that is, the explanation of
the possibility of such a knowledge a priori, the utmost we were able to do was to show that if we saw the possibility
of the freedom of an efficient cause, we should also see not merely the possibility, but even the necessity, of the
moral law as the supreme practical law of rational beings, to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will;
because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define practical freedom as independence of the will on
anything but the moral law. But we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an efficient cause, especially in
the world of sense; we are fortunate if only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its
impossibility, and are now, by the moral law which postulates it, compelled and therefore authorized to assume it.
However, there are still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical principles, like any other
physical faculty, and treat it as a psychological property, the explanation of which only requires a more exact study
of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the will, and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a
being that belongs to the world of sense (which is really the point). They thus deprive us of the grand revelation
which we obtain through practical reason by means of the moral law, the revelation, namely, of a supersensible world by
the realization of the otherwise transcendent concept of freedom, and by this deprive us also of the moral law itself,
which admits no empirical principle of determination. Therefore it will be necessary to add something here as a
protection against this delusion and to exhibit empiricism in its naked superficiality.

The notion of causality as physical necessity, in opposition to the same notion as freedom, concerns only the
existence of things so far as it is determinable in time, and, consequently, as phenomena, in opposition to their
causality as things in themselves. Now if we take the attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of
things in themselves (which is the common view), then it is impossible to reconcile the necessity of the causal
relation with freedom; they are contradictory. For from the former it follows that every event, and consequently every
action that takes place at a certain point of time, is a necessary result of what existed in time preceding. Now as
time past is no longer in my power, hence every action that I perform must be the necessary result of certain
determining grounds which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which I am acting I am never free. Nay, even
if I assume that my whole existence is independent on any foreign cause (for instance, God), so that the determining
principles of my causality, and even of my whole existence, were not outside myself, yet this would not in the least
transform that physical necessity into freedom. For at every moment of time I am still under the necessity of being
determined to action by that which is not in my power, and the series of events infinite a parte priori, which I only
continue according to a predetermined order and could never begin of myself, would be a continuous physical chain, and
therefore my causality would never be freedom.

If, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is determined in time, we cannot except him from the
law of necessity as to all events in his existence and, consequently, as to his actions also; for that would be to hand
him over to blind chance. Now as this law inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far as their existence
is determinable in time, it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of these
things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception. Consequently, if we would still
save it, no other way remains but to consider that the existence of a thing, so far as it is determinable in time, and
therefore its causality, according to the law of physical necessity, belong to appearance, and to attribute freedom to
the same being as a thing in itself. This is certainly inevitable, if we would retain both these contradictory concepts
together; but in application, when we try to explain their combination in one and the same action, great difficulties
present themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable.

When I say of a man who commits a theft that, by the law of causality, this deed is a necessary result of the
determining causes in preceding time, then it was impossible that it could not have happened; how then can the
judgement, according to the moral law, make any change, and suppose that it could have been omitted, because the law
says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be called quite free at the same moment, and with
respect to the same action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity? Some try to evade this by saying
that the causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom.
According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within the
acting thing itself, e.g., that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion, in which case we use the word
freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free
motion, because it moves its hands itself, which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; so although
the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which precede in time, we yet call them free, because these
causes are ideas produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence
actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let
themselves be put off, and so think they have solved, with a petty word — jugglery, that difficult problem, at the
solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the
surface. In fact, in the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of all moral laws and the consequent
responsibility, it does not matter whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by a physical law
reside within the subject or without him, or in the former case whether these principles are instinctive or are
conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these determining ideas have the ground of their
existence in time and in the antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. Then it matters not that these are
internal; it matters not that they have a psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions by
means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still determining principles of the causality of a being whose
existence is determinable in time, and therefore under the necessitation of conditions of past time, which therefore,
when the subject has to act, are no longer in his power. This may imply psychological freedom (if we choose to apply
this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in the mind), but it involves physical necessity and, therefore, leaves
no room for transcendental freedom, which must be conceived as independence on everything empirical, and, consequently,
on nature generally, whether it is an object of the internal sense considered in time only, or of the external in time
and space. Without this freedom (in the latter and true sense), which alone is practical a priori, no moral law and no
moral imputation are possible. Just for this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical law of
causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we do not mean by this that things which are subject to it
must be really material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time-series as it
is developed according to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called
automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter, or with Leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by
ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not also
transcendental, that is, absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which,
when once it is wound up, accomplishes its motions of itself.

Now, in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature
in one and the same action, we must remember what was said in the Critique of Pure Reason, or what follows therefrom;
viz., that the necessity of nature, which cannot coexist with the freedom of the subject, appertains only to the
attributes of the thing that is subject to time-conditions, consequently only to those of the acting subject as a
phenomenon; that therefore in this respect the determining principles of every action of the same reside in what
belongs to past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his own past actions and the character
that these may determine for him in his own eyes as a phenomenon). But the very same subject, being on the other side
conscious of himself as a thing in himself, considers his existence also in so far as it is not subject to
time-conditions, and regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives himself through reason; and in this
his existence nothing is antecedent to the determination of his will, but every action, and in general every
modification of his existence, varying according to his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence as a
sensible being is in the consciousness of his supersensible existence nothing but the result, and never to be regarded
as the determining principle, of his causality as a noumenon. In this view now the rational being can justly say of
every unlawful action that he performs, that he could very well have left it undone; although as appearance it is
sufficiently determined in the past, and in this respect is absolutely necessary; for it, with all the past which
determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character which he makes for himself, in consequence of
which he imputes the causality of those appearances to himself as a cause independent of sensibility.

With this agree perfectly the judicial sentences of that wonderful faculty in us which we call conscience. A man may
use as much art as he likes in order to paint to himself an unlawful act, that he remembers, as an unintentional error,
a mere oversight, such as one can never altogether avoid, and therefore as something in which he was carried away by
the stream of physical necessity, and thus to make himself out innocent, yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in
his favour can by no means silence the accuser within, if only he is conscious that at the time when he did this wrong
he was in his senses, that is, in possession of his freedom; and, nevertheless, he accounts for his error from some bad
habits, which by gradual neglect of attention he has allowed to grow upon him to such a degree that he can regard his
error as its natural consequence, although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which he casts upon
himself. This is also the ground of repentance for a long past action at every recollection of it; a painful feeling
produced by the moral sentiment, and which is practically void in so far as it cannot serve to undo what has been done.
(Hence Priestley, as a true and consistent fatalist, declares it absurd, and he deserves to be commended for this
candour more than those who, while they maintain the mechanism of the will in fact, and its freedom in words only, yet
wish it to be thought that they include it in their system of compromise, although they do not explain the possibility
of such moral imputation.) But the pain is quite legitimate, because when the law of our intelligible [supersensible]
existence (the moral law) is in question, reason recognizes no distinction of time, and only asks whether the event
belongs to me, as my act, and then always morally connects the same feeling with it, whether it has happened just now
or long ago. For in reference to the supersensible consciousness of its existence (i.e., freedom) the life of sense is
but a single phenomenon, which, inasmuch as it contains merely manifestations of the mental disposition with regard to
the moral law (i.e., of the character), must be judged not according to the physical necessity that belongs to it as
phenomenon, but according to the absolute spontaneity of freedom. It may therefore be admitted that, if it were
possible to have so profound an insight into a man’s mental character as shown by internal as well as external actions
as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and likewise all the external occasions that can influence them, we
could calculate a man’s conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse; and nevertheless we
may maintain that the man is free. In fact, if we were capable of a further glance, namely, an intellectual intuition
of the same subject (which indeed is not granted to us, and instead of it we have only the rational concept), then we
should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the
spontaneity of the subject as a thing in itself, of the determination of which no physical explanation can be given. In
default of this intuition, the moral law assures us of this distinction between the relation of our actions as
appearance to our sensible nature, and the relation of this sensible nature to the supersensible substratum in us. In
this view, which is natural to our reason, though inexplicable, we can also justify some judgements which we passed
with all conscientiousness, and which yet at first sight seem quite opposed to all equity. There are cases in which
men, even with the same education which has been profitable to others, yet show such early depravity, and so continue
to progress in it to years of manhood, that they are thought to be born villains, and their character altogether
incapable of improvement; and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or leave undone, they are reproached for
their faults as guilty; nay, they themselves (the children) regard these reproaches as well founded, exactly as if in
spite of the hopeless natural quality of mind ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible as any other man.
This could not happen if we did not suppose that whatever springs from a man’s choice (as every action intentionally
performed undoubtedly does) has as its foundation a free causality, which from early youth expresses its character in
its manifestations (i.e., actions). These, on account of the uniformity of conduct, exhibit a natural connection, which
however does not make the vicious quality of the will necessary, but on the contrary, is the consequence of the evil
principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable, which only make it so much the more culpable and deserving of
punishment. There still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with the mechanism of nature in a being
belonging to the world of sense; a difficulty which, even after all the foregoing is admitted, threatens freedom with
complete destruction. But with this danger there is also a circumstance that offers hope of an issue still favourable
to freedom; namely, that the same difficulty presses much more strongly (in fact as we shall presently see, presses
only) on the system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be the existence of things in
themselves; it does not therefore oblige us to give up our capital supposition of the ideality of time as a mere form
of sensible intuition, and consequently as a mere manner of representation which is proper to the subject as belonging
to the world of sense; and therefore it only requires that this view be reconciled with this idea.

The difficulty is as follows: Even if it is admitted that the supersensible subject can be free with respect to a
given action, although, as a subject also belonging to the world of sense, he is under mechanical conditions with
respect to the same action, still, as soon as we allow that God as universal first cause is also the cause of the
existence of substance (a proposition which can never be given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God
as the Being of all beings, and therewith giving up his all sufficiency, on which everything in theology depends), it
seems as if we must admit that a man’s actions have their determining principle in something which is wholly out of his
power — namely, in the causality of a Supreme Being distinct from himself and on whom his own existence and the whole
determination of his causality are absolutely dependent. In point of fact, if a man’s actions as belonging to his
modifications in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance, but as a thing in itself, freedom could not
be saved. Man would be a marionette or an automaton, like Vaucanson’s, prepared and wound up by the Supreme Artist.
Self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking automaton; but the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be
mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom, and it would deserve this name only in a comparative sense, since,
although the proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of their determining causes are internal, yet
the last and highest is found in a foreign hand. Therefore I do not see how those who still insist on regarding time
and space as attributes belonging to the existence of things in themselves, can avoid admitting the fatality of
actions; or if (like the otherwise acute Mendelssohn) they allow them to be conditions necessarily belonging to the
existence of finite and derived beings, but not to that of the infinite Supreme Being, I do not see on what ground they
can justify such a distinction, or, indeed, how they can avoid the contradiction that meets them, when they hold that
existence in time is an attribute necessarily belonging to finite things in themselves, whereas God is the cause of
this existence, but cannot be the cause of time (or space) itself (since this must be presupposed as a necessary a
priori condition of the existence of things); and consequently as regards the existence of these things. His causality
must be subject to conditions and even to the condition of time; and this would inevitably bring in everything
contradictory to the notions of His infinity and independence. On the other hand, it is quite easy for us to draw the
distinction between the attribute of the divine existence of being independent on all time-conditions, and that of a
being of the world of sense, the distinction being that between the existence of a being in itself and that of a thing
in appearance. Hence, if this ideality of time and space is not adopted, nothing remains but Spinozism, in which space
and time are essential attributes of the Supreme Being Himself, and the things dependent on Him (ourselves, therefore,
included) are not substances, but merely accidents inhering in Him; since, if these things as His effects exist in time
only, this being the condition of their existence in themselves, then the actions of these beings must be simply His
actions which He performs in some place and time. Thus, Spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its fundamental idea,
argues more consistently than the creation theory can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves
existing in time, are regarded as effects of a Supreme Cause, and yet as not [belonging] to Him and His action, but as
separate substances.

The above-mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as follows: If existence in time is a mere sensible
mode of representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and consequently does not apply to them as things in
themselves, then the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves, since the notion of creation does
not belong to the sensible form of representation of existence or to causality, but can only be referred to noumena.
Consequently, when I say of beings in the world of sense that they are created, I so far regard them as noumena. As it
would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that God is a creator of appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say
that as creator He is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as appearances, although He is the
cause of the existence of the acting beings (which are noumena). If now it is possible to affirm freedom in spite of
the natural mechanism of actions as appearances (by regarding existence in time as something that belongs only to
appearances, not to things in themselves), then the circumstance that the acting beings are creatures cannot make the
slightest difference, since creation concerns their supersensible and not their sensible existence, and, therefore,
cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the appearances. It would be quite different if the beings in the
world as things in themselves existed in time, since in that case the creator of substance would be at the same time
the author of the whole mechanism of this substance.

Of so great importance is the separation of time (as well as space) from the existence of things in themselves which
was effected in the Critique of the Pure Speculative Reason.

It may be said that the solution here proposed involves great difficulty in itself and is scarcely susceptible of a
lucid exposition. But is any other solution that has been attempted, or that may be attempted, easier and more
intelligible? Rather might we say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness than candour in
keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as possible, in the hope that if they said nothing about it, probably
no one would think of it. If science is to be advanced, all difficulties must be laid open, and we must even search for
those that are hidden, for every difficulty calls forth a remedy, which cannot be discovered without science gaining
either in extent or in exactness; and thus even obstacles become means of increasing the thoroughness of science. On
the other hand, if the difficulties are intentionally concealed, or merely removed by palliatives, then sooner or later
they burst out into incurable mischiefs, which bring science to ruin in an absolute scepticism.

Since it is, properly speaking, the notion of freedom alone amongst all the ideas of pure speculative reason that so
greatly enlarges our knowledge in the sphere of the supersensible, though only of our practical knowledge, I ask myself
why it exclusively possesses so great fertility, whereas the others only designate the vacant space for possible beings
of the pure understanding, but are unable by any means to define the concept of them. I presently find that as I cannot
think anything without a category, I must first look for a category for the rational idea of freedom with which I am
now concerned; and this is the category of causality; and although freedom, a concept of the reason, being a
transcendent concept, cannot have any intuition corresponding to it, yet the concept of the understanding — for the
synthesis of which the former demands the unconditioned — (namely, the concept of causality) must have a sensible
intuition given, by which first its objective reality is assured. Now, the categories are all divided into two classes
— the mathematical, which concern the unity of synthesis in the conception of objects, and the dynamical, which refer
to the unity of synthesis in the conception of the existence of objects. The former (those of magnitude and quality)
always contain a synthesis of the homogeneous, and it is not possible to find in this the unconditioned antecedent to
what is given in sensible intuition as conditioned in space and time, as this would itself have to belong to space and
time, and therefore be again still conditioned. Whence it resulted in the Dialectic of Pure Theoretic Reason that the
opposite methods of attaining the unconditioned and the totality of the conditions were both wrong. The categories of
the second class (those of causality and of the necessity of a thing) did not require this homogeneity (of the
conditioned and the condition in synthesis), since here what we have to explain is not how the intuition is compounded
from a manifold in it, but only how the existence of the conditioned object corresponding to it is added to the
existence of the condition (added, namely, in the understanding as connected therewith); and in that case it was
allowable to suppose in the supersensible world the unconditioned antecedent to the altogether conditioned in the world
of sense (both as regards the causal connection and the contingent existence of things themselves), although this
unconditioned remained indeterminate, and to make the synthesis transcendent. Hence, it was found in the Dialectic of
the Pure Speculative Reason that the two apparently opposite methods of obtaining for the conditioned the unconditioned
were not really contradictory, e.g., in the synthesis of causality to conceive for the conditioned in the series of
causes and effects of the sensible world, a causality which has no sensible condition, and that the same action which,
as belonging to the world of sense, is always sensibly conditioned, that is, mechanically necessary, yet at the same
time may be derived from a causality not sensibly conditioned — being the causality of the acting being as belonging to
the supersensible world — and may consequently be conceived as free. Now, the only point in question was to change this
may be into is; that is, that we should be able to show in an actual case, as it were by a fact, that
certain actions imply such a causality (namely, the intellectual, sensibly unconditioned), whether they are actual or
only commanded, that is, objectively necessary in a practical sense. We could not hope to find this connections in
actions actually given in experience as events of the sensible world, since causality with freedom must always be
sought outside the world of sense in the world of intelligence. But things of sense are the only things offered to our
perception and observation. Hence, nothing remained but to find an incontestable objective principle of causality which
excludes all sensible conditions: that is, a principle in which reason does not appeal further to something else as a
determining ground of its causality, but contains this determining ground itself by means of that principle, and in
which therefore it is itself as pure reason practical. Now, this principle had not to be searched for or discovered; it
had long been in the reason of all men, and incorporated in their nature, and is the principle of morality. Therefore,
that unconditioned causality, with the faculty of it, namely, freedom, is no longer merely indefinitely and
problematically thought (this speculative reason could prove to be feasible), but is even as regards the law of its
causality definitely and assertorially known; and with it the fact that a being (I myself), belonging to the world of
sense, belongs also to the supersensible world, this is also positively known, and thus the reality of the
supersensible world is established and in practical respects definitely given, and this definiteness, which for
theoretical purposes would be transcendent, is for practical purposes immanent. We could not, however, make a similar
step as regards the second dynamical idea, namely, that of a necessary being. We could not rise to it from the sensible
world without the aid of the first dynamical idea. For if we attempted to do so, we should have ventured to leave at a
bound all that is given to us, and to leap to that of which nothing is given us that can help us to effect the
connection of such a supersensible being with the world of sense (since the necessary being would have to be known as
given outside ourselves). On the other hand, it is now obvious that this connection is quite possible in relation to
our own subject, inasmuch as I know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible [supersensible] being determined by
the moral law (by means of freedom), and on the other side as acting in the world of sense. It is the concept of
freedom alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the conditioned and sensible without going
out of ourselves. For it is our own reason that by means of the supreme and unconditional practical law knows that
itself and the being that is conscious of this law (our own person) belong to the pure world of understanding, and
moreover defines the manner in which, as such, it can be active. In this way it can be understood why in the whole
faculty of reason it is the practical reason only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us
knowledge of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, for this very reason cannot be extended further than
is necessary for pure practical purposes.

Let me be permitted on this occasion to make one more remark, namely, that every step that we make with pure reason,
even in the practical sphere where no attention is paid to subtle speculation, nevertheless accords with all the
material points of the Critique of the Theoretical Reason as closely and directly as if each step had been thought out
with deliberate purpose to establish this confirmation. Such a thorough agreement, wholly unsought for and quite
obvious (as anyone can convince himself, if he will only carry moral inquiries up to their principles), between the
most important proposition of practical reason and the often seemingly too subtle and needless remarks of the Critique
of the Speculative Reason, occasions surprise and astonishment, and confirms the maxim already recognized and praised
by others, namely, that in every scientific inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with all possible exactness and
frankness, without caring for any objections that may be raised from outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to
carry out our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Frequent observation has convinced me that, when such
researches are concluded, that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable, considered in relation to
other extraneous doctrines, when I left this doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business in
hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found to agree perfectly with what had been discovered separately
without the least regard to those doctrines, and without any partiality or prejudice for them. Authors would save
themselves many errors and much labour lost (because spent on a delusion) if they could only resolve to go to work with
more frankness.

Book II. Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason.

Chapter I.

Of a Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason Generally.

Pure reason always has its dialectic, whether it is considered in its speculative or its practical
employment; for it requires the absolute totality of the conditions of what is given conditioned, and this can only be
found in things in themselves. But as all conceptions of things in themselves must be referred to intuitions, and with
us men these can never be other than sensible and hence can never enable us to know objects as things in themselves but
only as appearances, and since the unconditioned can never be found in this chain of appearances which consists only of
conditioned and conditions; thus from applying this rational idea of the totality of the conditions (in other words of
the unconditioned) to appearances, there arises an inevitable illusion, as if these latter were things in themselves
(for in the absence of a warning critique they are always regarded as such). This illusion would never be noticed as
delusive if it did not betray itself by a conflict of reason with itself, when it applies to appearances its
fundamental principle of presupposing the unconditioned to everything conditioned. By this, however, reason is
compelled to trace this illusion to its source, and search how it can be removed, and this can only be done by a
complete critical examination of the whole pure faculty of reason; so that the antinomy of the pure reason which is
manifest in its dialectic is in fact the most beneficial error into which human reason could ever have fallen, since it
at last drives us to search for the key to escape from this labyrinth; and when this key is found, it further discovers
that which we did not seek but yet had need of, namely, a view into a higher and an immutable order of things, in which
we even now are, and in which we are thereby enabled by definite precepts to continue to live according to the highest
dictates of reason.

It may be seen in detail in the Critique of Pure Reason how in its speculative employment this natural dialectic is
to be solved, and how the error which arises from a very natural illusion may be guarded against. But reason in its
practical use is not a whit better off. As pure practical reason, it likewise seeks to find the unconditioned for the
practically conditioned (which rests on inclinations and natural wants), and this is not as the determining principle
of the will, but even when this is given (in the moral law) it seeks the unconditioned totality of the object of pure
practical reason under the name of the summum bonum.

To define this idea practically, i.e., sufficiently for the maxims of our rational conduct, is the business of
practical wisdom, and this again as a science is philosophy, in the sense in which the word was understood by the
ancients, with whom it meant instruction in the conception in which the summum bonum was to be placed, and the conduct
by which it was to be obtained. It would be well to leave this word in its ancient signification as a doctrine of the
summum bonum, so far as reason endeavours to make this into a science. For on the one hand the restriction annexed
would suit the Greek expression (which signifies the love of wisdom), and yet at the same time would be sufficient to
embrace under the name of philosophy the love of science: that is to say, of all speculative rational knowledge, so far
as it is serviceable to reason, both for that conception and also for the practical principle determining our conduct,
without letting out of sight the main end, on account of which alone it can be called a doctrine of practical wisdom.
On the other hand, it would be no harm to deter the self-conceit of one who ventures to claim the title of philosopher
by holding before him in the very definition a standard of self-estimation which would very much lower his pretensions.
For a teacher of wisdom would mean something more than a scholar who has not come so far as to guide himself, much less
to guide others, with certain expectation of attaining so high an end: it would mean a master in the knowledge of
wisdom, which implies more than a modest man would claim for himself. Thus philosophy as well as wisdom would always
remain an ideal, which objectively is presented complete in reason alone, while subjectively for the person it is only
the goal of his unceasing endeavours; and no one would be justified in professing to be in possession of it so as to
assume the name of philosopher who could not also show its infallible effects in his own person as an example (in his
self-mastery and the unquestioned interest that he takes preeminently in the general good), and this the ancients also
required as a condition of deserving that honourable title.

We have another preliminary remark to make respecting the dialectic of the pure practical reason, on the point of
the definition of the summum bonum (a successful solution of which dialectic would lead us to expect, as in case of
that of the theoretical reason, the most beneficial effects, inasmuch as the self-contradictions of pure practical
reason honestly stated, and not concealed, force us to undertake a complete critique of this faculty).

The moral law is the sole determining principle of a pure will. But since this is merely formal (viz., as
prescribing only the form of the maxim as universally legislative), it abstracts as a determining principle from all
matter that is to say, from every object of volition. Hence, though the summum bonum may be the whole object of a pure
practical reason, i.e., a pure will, yet it is not on that account to be regarded as its determining principle; and the
moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realization or promotion are aimed at. This
remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the slightest
misinterpretation perverts men’s minds. For it will have been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object
under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the
supreme practical principle, this would always introduce heteronomy and crush out the moral principle.

It is, however, evident that if the notion of the summum bonum includes that of the moral law as its supreme
condition, then the summum bonum would not merely be an object, but the notion of it and the conception of its
existence as possible by our own practical reason would likewise be the determining principle of the will, since in
that case the will is in fact determined by the moral law which is already included in this conception, and by no other
object, as the principle of autonomy requires. This order of the conceptions of determination of the will must not be
lost sight of, as otherwise we should misunderstand ourselves and think we had fallen into a contradiction, while
everything remains in perfect harmony.

Chapter II.

Of the Dialectic of Pure Reason in defining the Conception of the “Summum Bonum”.

The conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which might occasion needless disputes if
we did not attend to it. The summum may mean either the supreme (supremum) or the perfect (consummatum). The former is
that condition which is itself unconditioned, i.e., is not subordinate to any other (originarium); the second is that
whole which is not a part of a greater whole of the same kind (perfectissimum). It has been shown in the Analytic that
virtue (as worthiness to be happy) is the supreme condition of all that can appear to us desirable, and consequently of
all our pursuit of happiness, and is therefore the supreme good. But it does not follow that it is the whole and
perfect good as the object of the desires of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also, and that not
merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes himself an end, but even in the judgement of an impartial reason,
which regards persons in general as ends in themselves. For to need happiness, to deserve it, and yet at the same time
not to participate in it, cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being possessed at the same time
of all power, if, for the sake of experiment, we conceive such a being. Now inasmuch as virtue and happiness together
constitute the possession of the summum bonum in a person, and the distribution of happiness in exact proportion to
morality (which is the worth of the person, and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the summum bonum of a possible
world; hence this summum bonum expresses the whole, the perfect good, in which, however, virtue as the condition is
always the supreme good, since it has no condition above it; whereas happiness, while it is pleasant to the possessor
of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good, but always presupposes morally right behaviour as its
condition.

When two elements are necessarily united in one concept, they must be connected as reason and consequence, and this
either so that their unity is considered as analytical (logical connection), or as synthetical (real connection) the
former following the law of identity, the latter that of causality. The connection of virtue and happiness may
therefore be understood in two ways: either the endeavour to be virtuous and the rational pursuit of happiness are not
two distinct actions, but absolutely identical, in which case no maxim need be made the principle of the former, other
than what serves for the latter; or the connection consists in this, that virtue produces happiness as something
distinct from the consciousness of virtue, as a cause produces an effect.

The ancient Greek schools were, properly speaking, only two, and in determining the conception of the summum bonum
these followed in fact one and the same method, inasmuch as they did not allow virtue and happiness to be regarded as
two distinct elements of the summum bonum, and consequently sought the unity of the principle by the rule of identity;
but they differed as to which of the two was to be taken as the fundamental notion. The Epicurean said: “To be
conscious that one’s maxims lead to happiness is virtue”; the Stoic said: “To be conscious of one’s virtue is
happiness.” With the former, Prudence was equivalent to morality; with the latter, who chose a higher designation for
virtue, morality alone was true wisdom.

While we must admire the men who in such early times tried all imaginable ways of extending the domain of
philosophy, we must at the same time lament that their acuteness was unfortunately misapplied in trying to trace out
identity between two extremely heterogeneous notions, those of happiness and virtue. But it agrees with the dialectical
spirit of their times (and subtle minds are even now sometimes misled in the same way) to get rid of irreconcilable
differences in principle by seeking to change them into a mere contest about words, and thus apparently working out the
identity of the notion under different names, and this usually occurs in cases where the combination of heterogeneous
principles lies so deep or so high, or would require so complete a transformation of the doctrines assumed in the rest
of the philosophical system, that men are afraid to penetrate deeply into the real difference and prefer treating it as
a difference in questions of form.

While both schools sought to trace out the identity of the practical principles of virtue and happiness, they were
not agreed as to the way in which they tried to force this identity, but were separated infinitely from one another,
the one placing its principle on the side of sense, the other on that of reason; the one in the consciousness of
sensible wants, the other in the independence of practical reason on all sensible grounds of determination. According
to the Epicurean, the notion of virtue was already involved in the maxim: “To promote one’s own happiness”; according
to the Stoics, on the other hand, the feeling of happiness was already contained in the consciousness of virtue. Now
whatever is contained in another notion is identical with part of the containing notion, but not with the whole, and
moreover two wholes may be specifically distinct, although they consist of the same parts; namely if the parts are
united into a whole in totally different ways. The Stoic maintained that the virtue was the whole summum bonum, and
happiness only the consciousness of possessing it, as making part of the state of the subject. The Epicurean maintained
that happiness was the whole summum bonum, and virtue only the form of the maxim for its pursuit; viz., the rational
use of the means for attaining it.

Now it is clear from the Analytic that the maxims of virtue and those of private happiness are quite heterogeneous
as to their supreme practical principle, and, although they belong to one summum bonum which together they make
possible, yet they are so far from coinciding that they restrict and check one another very much in the same subject.
Thus the question: “How is the summum bonum practically possible?” still remains an unsolved problem, notwithstanding
all the attempts at coalition that have hitherto been made. The Analytic has, however, shown what it is that makes the
problem difficult to solve; namely, that happiness and morality are two specifically distinct elements of the summum
bonum and, therefore, their combination cannot be analytically cognised (as if the man that seeks his own happiness
should find by mere analysis of his conception that in so acting he is virtuous, or as if the man that follows virtue
should in the consciousness of such conduct find that he is already happy ipso facto), but must be a synthesis of
concepts. Now since this combination is recognised as a priori, and therefore as practically necessary, and
consequently not as derived from experience, so that the possibility of the summum bonum does not rest on any empirical
principle, it follows that the deduction [legitimation] of this concept must be transcendental. It is a priori
(morally) necessary to produce the summum bonum by freedom of will: therefore the condition of its possibility must
rest solely on a priori principles of cognition.

I. The Antinomy of Practical Reason.

In the summum bonum which is practical for us, i.e., to be realized by our will, virtue and happiness are thought as
necessarily combined, so that the one cannot be assumed by pure practical reason without the other also being attached
to it. Now this combination (like every other) is either analytical or synthetical. It has been shown that it cannot be
analytical; it must then be synthetical and, more particularly, must be conceived as the connection of cause and
effect, since it concerns a practical good, i.e., one that is possible by means of action; consequently either the
desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of
happiness. The first is absolutely impossible, because (as was proved in the Analytic) maxims which place the
determining principle of the will in the desire of personal happiness are not moral at all, and no virtue can be
founded on them. But the second is also impossible, because the practical connection of causes and effects in the
world, as the result of the determination of the will, does not depend upon the moral dispositions of the will, but on
the knowledge of the laws of nature and the physical power to use them for one’s purposes; consequently we cannot
expect in the world by the most punctilious observance of the moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with
virtue adequate to the summum bonum. Now, as the promotion of this summum bonum, the conception of which contains this
connection, is a priori a necessary object of our will and inseparably attached to the moral law, the impossibility of
the former must prove the falsity of the latter. If then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules, then the
moral law also which commands us to promote it is directed to vain imaginary ends and must consequently be false.

II. Critical Solution of the Antinomy of Practical Reason.

The antinomy of pure speculative reason exhibits a similar conflict between freedom and physical necessity in the
causality of events in the world. It was solved by showing that there is no real contradiction when the events and even
the world in which they occur are regarded (as they ought to be) merely as appearances; since one and the same acting
being, as an appearance (even to his own inner sense), has a causality in the world of sense that always conforms to
the mechanism of nature, but with respect to the same events, so far as the acting person regards himself at the same
time as a noumenon (as pure intelligence in an existence not dependent on the condition of time), he can contain a
principle by which that causality acting according to laws of nature is determined, but which is itself free from all
laws of nature.

It is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical reason. The first of the two propositions, “That
the endeavour after happiness produces a virtuous mind,” is absolutely false; but the second, “That a virtuous mind
necessarily produces happiness,” is not absolutely false, but only in so far as virtue is considered as a form of
causality in the sensible world, and consequently only if I suppose existence in it to be the only sort of existence of
a rational being; it is then only conditionally false. But as I am not only justified in thinking that I exist also as
a noumenon in a world of the understanding, but even have in the moral law a purely intellectual determining principle
of my causality (in the sensible world), it is not impossible that morality of mind should have a connection as cause
with happiness (as an effect in the sensible world) if not immediate yet mediate (viz., through an intelligent author
of nature), and moreover necessary; while in a system of nature which is merely an object of the senses, this
combination could never occur except contingently and, therefore, could not suffice for the summum bonum.

Thus, notwithstanding this seeming conflict of practical reason with itself, the summum bonum, which is the
necessary supreme end of a will morally determined, is a true object thereof; for it is practically possible, and the
maxims of the will which as regards their matter refer to it have objective reality, which at first was threatened by
the antinomy that appeared in the connection of morality with happiness by a general law; but this was merely from a
misconception, because the relation between appearances was taken for a relation of the things in themselves to these
appearances.

When we find ourselves obliged to go so far, namely, to the connection with an intelligible world, to find the
possibility of the summum bonum, which reason points out to all rational beings as the goal of all their moral wishes,
it must seem strange that, nevertheless, the philosophers both of ancient and modern times have been able to find
happiness in accurate proportion to virtue even in this life (in the sensible world), or have persuaded themselves that
they were conscious thereof. For Epicurus as well as the Stoics extolled above everything the happiness that springs
from the consciousness of living virtuously; and the former was not so base in his practical precepts as one might
infer from the principles of his theory, which he used for explanation and not for action, or as they were interpreted
by many who were misled by his using the term pleasure for contentment; on the contrary, he reckoned the most
disinterested practice of good amongst the ways of enjoying the most intimate delight, and his scheme of pleasure (by
which he meant constant cheerfulness of mind) included the moderation and control of the inclinations, such as the
strictest moral philosopher might require. He differed from the Stoics chiefly in making this pleasure the motive,
which they very rightly refused to do. For, on the one hand, the virtuous Epicurus, like many well-intentioned men of
this day who do not reflect deeply enough on their principles, fell into the error of presupposing the virtuous
disposition in the persons for whom he wished to provide the springs to virtue (and indeed the upright man cannot be
happy if he is not first conscious of his uprightness; since with such a character the reproach that his habit of
thought would oblige him to make against himself in case of transgression and his moral self-condemnation would rob him
of all enjoyment of the pleasantness which his condition might otherwise contain). But the question is: How is such a
disposition possible in the first instance, and such a habit of thought in estimating the worth of one’s existence,
since prior to it there can be in the subject no feeling at all for moral worth? If a man is virtuous without being
conscious of his integrity in every action, he will certainly not enjoy life, however favourable fortune may be to him
in its physical circumstances; but can we make him virtuous in the first instance, in other words, before he esteems
the moral worth of his existence so highly, by praising to him the peace of mind that would result from the
consciousness of an integrity for which he has no sense?

On the other hand, however, there is here an occasion of a vitium subreptionis, and as it were of an optical
illusion, in the self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one feels — an illusion which even the
most experienced cannot altogether avoid. The moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a consciousness
that the will is determined directly by the law. Now the consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is
always the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action; but this pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself, is not
the determining principle of the action; on the contrary, the determination of the will directly by reason is the
source of the feeling of pleasure, and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the faculty of
desire. Now as this determination has exactly the same effect within in impelling to activity, that a feeling of the
pleasure to be expected from the desired action would have had, we easily look on what we ourselves do as something
which we merely passively feel, and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse, just as it happens in the so-called
illusion of the senses (in this case the inner sense). It is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined to
actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the illusion that regards the subjective side of this
capacity of intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a special sensible feeling (for an
intellectual feeling would be a contradiction). It is also of great importance to attend to this property of our
personality and as much as possible to cultivate the effect of reason on this feeling. But we must beware lest by
falsely extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its source lie in particular feelings of
pleasure (which are in fact only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the law itself, by putting
as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not
possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its foundation (for this would always be sensible and
pathological); and consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by no means analogous to the feeling
of pleasure, although in relation to the faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but from different sources: it
is only by this mode of conception, however, that we can attain what we are seeking, namely, that actions be done not
merely in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings), but from duty, which must be the true end of all
moral cultivation.

Have we not, however, a word which does not express enjoyment, as happiness does, but indicates a satisfaction in
one’s existence, an analogue of the happiness which must necessarily accompany the consciousness of virtue? Yes this
word is self-contentment which in its proper signification always designates only a negative satisfaction in one’s
existence, in which one is conscious of needing nothing. Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of following
the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not
as affecting) our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the only
source of an unaltered contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no special feeling. This may be
called intellectual contentment. The sensible contentment (improperly so-called) which rests on the satisfaction of the
inclinations, however delicate they may be imagined to be, can never be adequate to the conception of it. For the
inclinations change, they grow with the indulgence shown them, and always leave behind a still greater void than we had
thought to fill. Hence they are always burdensome to a rational being, and, although he cannot lay them aside, they
wrest from him the wish to be rid of them. Even an inclination to what is right (e.g., to beneficence), though it may
much facilitate the efficacy of the moral maxims, cannot produce any. For in these all must be directed to the
conception of the law as a determining principle, if the action is to contain morality and not merely legality.
Inclination is blind and slavish, whether it be of a good sort or not, and, when morality is in question, reason must
not play the part merely of guardian to inclination, but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to its own
interest as pure practical reason. This very feeling of compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes the deliberation
on the question of duty and becomes a determining principle, is even annoying to right thinking persons, brings their
deliberate maxims into confusion, and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be subject to lawgiving reason
alone.

From this we can understand how the consciousness of this faculty of a pure practical reason produces by action
(virtue) a consciousness of mastery over one’s inclinations, and therefore of independence of them, and consequently
also of the discontent that always accompanies them, and thus a negative satisfaction with one’s state, i.e.,
contentment, which is primarily contentment with one’s own person. Freedom itself becomes in this way (namely,
indirectly) capable of an enjoyment which cannot be called happiness, because it does not depend on the positive
concurrence of a feeling, nor is it, strictly speaking, bliss, since it does not include complete independence of
inclinations and wants, but it resembles bliss in so far as the determination of one’s will at least can hold itself
free from their influence; and thus, at least in its origin, this enjoyment is analogous to the self-sufficiency which
we can ascribe only to the Supreme Being.

From this solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason, it follows that in practical principles we may at least
conceive as possible a natural and necessary connection between the consciousness of morality and the expectation of a
proportionate happiness as its result, though it does not follow that we can know or perceive this connection; that, on
the other hand, principles of the pursuit of happiness cannot possibly produce morality; that, therefore, morality is
the supreme good (as the first condition of the summum bonum), while happiness constitutes its second element, but only
in such a way that it is the morally conditioned, but necessary consequence of the former. Only with this subordination
is the summum bonum the whole object of pure practical reason, which must necessarily conceive it as possible, since it
commands us to contribute to the utmost of our power to its realization. But since the possibility of such connection
of the conditioned with its condition belongs wholly to the supersensual relation of things and cannot be given
according to the laws of the world of sense, although the practical consequences of the idea belong to the world of
sense, namely, the actions that aim at realizing the summum bonum; we will therefore endeavour to set forth the grounds
of that possibility, first, in respect of what is immediately in our power, and then, secondly, in that which is not in
our power, but which reason presents to us as the supplement of our impotence, for the realization of the summum bonum
(which by practical principles is necessary).

III. Of the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason in its Union with the Speculative Reason.

By primacy between two or more things connected by reason, I understand the prerogative, belonging to one, of being
the first determining principle in the connection with all the rest. In a narrower practical sense it means the
prerogative of the interest of one in so far as the interest of the other is subordinated to it, while it is not
postponed to any other. To every faculty of the mind we can attribute an interest, that is, a principle, that contains
the condition on which alone the former is called into exercise. Reason, as the faculty of principles, determines the
interest of all the powers of the mind and is determined by its own. The interest of its speculative employment
consists in the cognition of the object pushed to the highest a priori principles: that of its practical employment, in
the determination of the will in respect of the final and complete end. As to what is necessary for the possibility of
any employment of reason at all, namely, that its principles and affirmations should not contradict one another, this
constitutes no part of its interest, but is the condition of having reason at all; it is only its development, not mere
consistency with itself, that is reckoned as its interest.

If practical reason could not assume or think as given anything further than what speculative reason of itself could
offer it from its own insight, the latter would have the primacy. But supposing that it had of itself original a priori
principles with which certain theoretical positions were inseparably connected, while these were withdrawn from any
possible insight of speculative reason (which, however, they must not contradict); then the question is: Which interest
is the superior (not which must give way, for they are not necessarily conflicting), whether speculative reason, which
knows nothing of all that the practical offers for its acceptance, should take up these propositions and (although they
transcend it) try to unite them with its own concepts as a foreign possession handed over to it, or whether it is
justified in obstinately following its own separate interest and, according to the canonic of Epicurus, rejecting as
vain subtlety everything that cannot accredit its objective reality by manifest examples to be shown in experience,
even though it should be never so much interwoven with the interest of the practical (pure) use of reason, and in
itself not contradictory to the theoretical, merely because it infringes on the interest of the speculative reason to
this extent, that it removes the bounds which this latter had set to itself, and gives it up to every nonsense or
delusion of imagination?

In fact, so far as practical reason is taken as dependent on pathological conditions, that is, as merely regulating
the inclinations under the sensible principle of happiness, we could not require speculative reason to take its
principles from such a source. Mohammed’s paradise, or the absorption into the Deity of the theosophists and mystics
would press their monstrosities on the reason according to the taste of each, and one might as well have no reason as
surrender it in such fashion to all sorts of dreams. But if pure reason of itself can be practical and is actually so,
as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a
theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although
it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not
contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason,
it must accept them, though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source, something that has not grown on its
own ground, but yet is sufficiently authenticated; and it must try to compare and connect them with everything that it
has in its power as speculative reason. It must remember, however, that these are not additions to its insight, but yet
are extensions of its employment in another, namely, a practical aspect; and this is not in the least opposed to its
interest, which consists in the restriction of wild speculation.

Thus, when pure speculative and pure practical reason are combined in one cognition, the latter has the primacy,
provided, namely, that this combination is not contingent and arbitrary, but founded a priori on reason itself and
therefore necessary. For without this subordination there would arise a conflict of reason with itself; since, if they
were merely coordinate, the former would close its boundaries strictly and admit nothing from the latter into its
domain, while the latter would extend its bounds over everything and when its needs required would seek to embrace the
former within them. Nor could we reverse the order and require pure practical reason to be subordinate to the
speculative, since all interest is ultimately practical, and even that of speculative reason is conditional, and it is
only in the practical employment of reason that it is complete.

IV. The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason.

The realization of the summum bonum in the world is the necessary object of a will determinable by the moral law.
But in this will the perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the supreme condition of the summum bonum.
This then must be possible, as well as its object, since it is contained in the command to promote the latter. Now, the
perfect accordance of the will with the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible
world is capable at any moment of his existence. Since, nevertheless, it is required as practically necessary, it can
only be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance, and on the principles of pure practical
reason it is necessary to assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will.

Now, this endless progress is only possible on the supposition of an endless duration of the existence and
personality of the same rational being (which is called the immortality of the soul). The summum bonum, then,
practically is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul; consequently this immortality, being
inseparably connected with the moral law, is a postulate of pure practical reason (by which I mean a theoretical
proposition, not demonstrable as such, but which is an inseparable result of an unconditional a priori practical
law).

This principle of the moral destination of our nature, namely, that it is only in an endless progress that we can
attain perfect accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not merely for the present purpose of
supplementing the impotence of speculative reason, but also with respect to religion. In default of it, either the
moral law is quite degraded from its holiness, being made out to be indulgent and conformable to our convenience, or
else men strain their notions of their vocation and their expectation to an unattainable goal, hoping to acquire
complete holiness of will, and so they lose themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams, which wholly contradict
self-knowledge. In both cases the unceasing effort to obey punctually and thoroughly a strict and inflexible command of
reason, which yet is not ideal but real, is only hindered. For a rational but finite being, the only thing possible is
an endless progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection. The Infinite Being, to whom the condition of
time is nothing, sees in this to us endless succession a whole of accordance with the moral law; and the holiness which
his command inexorably requires, in order to be true to his justice in the share which He assigns to each in the summum
bonum, is to be found in a single intellectual intuition of the whole existence of rational beings. All that can be
expected of the creature in respect of the hope of this participation would be the consciousness of his tried
character, by which from the progress he has hitherto made from the worse to the morally better, and the immutability
of purpose which has thus become known to him, he may hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same, however long
his existence may last, even beyond this life,13 and thus he may hope, not
indeed here, nor in any imaginable point of his future existence, but only in the endlessness of his duration (which
God alone can survey) to be perfectly adequate to his will (without indulgence or excuse, which do not harmonize with
justice).

13 It seems, nevertheless, impossible for a creature to have
the conviction of his unwavering firmness of mind in the progress towards goodness. On this account the Christian
religion makes it come only from the same Spirit that works sanctification, that is, this firm purpose, and with it the
consciousness of steadfastness in the moral progress. But naturally one who is conscious that he has persevered through
a long portion of his life up to the end in the progress to the better, and this genuine moral motives, may well have
the comforting hope, though not the certainty, that even in an existence prolonged beyond this life he will continue in
these principles; and although he is never justified here in his own eyes, nor can ever hope to be so in the increased
perfection of his nature, to which he looks forward, together with an increase of duties, nevertheless in this progress
which, though it is directed to a goal infinitely remote, yet is in God’s sight regarded as equivalent to possession,
he may have a prospect of a blessed future; for this is the word that reason employs to designate perfect well-being
independent of all contingent causes of the world, and which, like holiness, is an idea that can be contained only in
an endless progress and its totality, and consequently is never fully attained by a creature.

V. The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason.

In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without
the aid of any sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the first and principle element of the
summum bonum, viz., morality; and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the postulate of immortality.
The same law must also lead us to affirm the possibility of the second element of the summum bonum, viz., happiness
proportioned to that morality, and this on grounds as disinterested as before, and solely from impartial reason; that
is, it must lead to the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in other words, it must
postulate the existence of God, as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum (an object of the
will which is necessarily connected with the moral legislation of pure reason). We proceed to exhibit this connection
in a convincing manner.

Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and
will; it rests, therefore, on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end and likewise with the essential
determining principle of his will. Now the moral law as a law of freedom commands by determining principles, which
ought to be quite independent of nature and of its harmony with our faculty of desire (as springs). But the acting
rational being in the world is not the cause of the world and of nature itself. There is not the least ground,
therefore, in the moral law for a necessary connection between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that
belongs to the world as part of it, and therefore dependent on it, and which for that reason cannot by his will be a
cause of this nature, nor by his own power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as his happiness is concerned, with his
practical principles. Nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, i.e., the necessary pursuit of the summum
bonum, such a connection is postulated as necessary: we ought to endeavour to promote the summum bonum, which,
therefore, must be possible. Accordingly, the existence of a cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself and
containing the principle of this connection, namely, of the exact harmony of happiness with morality, is also
postulated. Now this supreme cause must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a law of the
will of rational beings, but with the conception of this law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining
principle of the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but with their morality as their motive,
that is, with their moral character. Therefore, the summum bonum is possible in the world only on the supposition of a
Supreme Being having a causality corresponding to moral character. Now a being that is capable of acting on the
conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this
conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the
summum bonum is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is God. It
follows that the postulate of the possibility of the highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of
the reality of a highest original good, that is to say, of the existence of God. Now it was seen to be a duty for us to
promote the summum bonum; consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected with duty as a
requisite, that we should presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is possible only on condition of
the existence of God, it inseparably connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally necessary to
assume the existence of God.

It must be remarked here that this moral necessity is subjective, that is, it is a want, and not objective, that is,
itself a duty, for there cannot be a duty to suppose the existence of anything (since this concerns only the
theoretical employment of reason). Moreover, it is not meant by this that it is necessary to suppose the existence of
God as a basis of all obligation in general (for this rests, as has been sufficiently proved, simply on the autonomy of
reason itself). What belongs to duty here is only the endeavour to realize and promote the summum bonum in the world,
the possibility of which can therefore be postulated; and as our reason finds it not conceivable except on the
supposition of a supreme intelligence, the admission of this existence is therefore connected with the consciousness of
our duty, although the admission itself belongs to the domain of speculative reason. Considered in respect of this
alone, as a principle of explanation, it may be called a hypothesis, but in reference to the intelligibility of an
object given us by the moral law (the summum bonum), and consequently of a requirement for practical purposes, it may
be called faith, that is to say a pure rational faith, since pure reason (both in its theoretical and practical use) is
the sole source from which it springs.

From this deduction it is now intelligible why the Greek schools could never attain the solution of their problem of
the practical possibility of the summum bonum, because they made the rule of the use which the will of man makes of his
freedom the sole and sufficient ground of this possibility, thinking that they had no need for that purpose of the
existence of God. No doubt they were so far right that they established the principle of morals of itself independently
of this postulate, from the relation of reason only to the will, and consequently made it the supreme practical
condition of the summum bonum; but it was not therefore the whole condition of its possibility. The Epicureans had
indeed assumed as the supreme principle of morality a wholly false one, namely that of happiness, and had substituted
for a law a maxim of arbitrary choice according to every man’s inclination; they proceeded, however, consistently
enough in this, that they degraded their summum bonum likewise, just in proportion to the meanness of their fundamental
principle, and looked for no greater happiness than can be attained by human prudence (including temperance and
moderation of the inclinations), and this as we know would be scanty enough and would be very different according to
circumstances; not to mention the exceptions that their maxims must perpetually admit and which make them incapable of
being laws. The Stoics, on the contrary, had chosen their supreme practical principle quite rightly, making virtue the
condition of the summum bonum; but when they represented the degree of virtue required by its pure law as fully
attainable in this life, they not only strained the moral powers of the man whom they called the wise beyond all the
limits of his nature, and assumed a thing that contradicts all our knowledge of men, but also and principally they
would not allow the second element of the summum bonum, namely, happiness, to be properly a special object of human
desire, but made their wise man, like a divinity in his consciousness of the excellence of his person, wholly
independent of nature (as regards his own contentment); they exposed him indeed to the evils of life, but made him not
subject to them (at the same time representing him also as free from moral evil). They thus, in fact, left out the
second element of the summum bonum namely, personal happiness, placing it solely in action and satisfaction with one’s
own personal worth, thus including it in the consciousness of being morally minded, in which they might have been
sufficiently refuted by the voice of their own nature.

The doctrine of Christianity,14 even if we do not yet consider it as a
religious doctrine, gives, touching this point, a conception of the summum bonum (the kingdom of God), which alone
satisfies the strictest demand of practical reason. The moral law is holy (unyielding) and demands holiness of morals,
although all the moral perfection to which man can attain is still only virtue, that is, a rightful disposition arising
from respect for the law, implying consciousness of a constant propensity to transgression, or at least a want of
purity, that is, a mixture of many spurious (not moral) motives of obedience to the law, consequently a self-esteem
combined with humility. In respect, then, of the holiness which the Christian law requires, this leaves the creature
nothing but a progress in infinitum, but for that very reason it justifies him in hoping for an endless duration of his
existence. The worth of a character perfectly accordant with the moral law is infinite, since the only restriction on
all possible happiness in the judgement of a wise and all powerful distributor of it is the absence of conformity of
rational beings to their duty. But the moral law of itself does not promise any happiness, for according to our
conceptions of an order of nature in general, this is not necessarily connected with obedience to the law. Now
Christian morality supplies this defect (of the second indispensable element of the summum bonum) by representing the
world in which rational beings devote themselves with all their soul to the moral law, as a kingdom of God, in which
nature and morality are brought into a harmony foreign to each of itself, by a holy Author who makes the derived summum
bonum possible. Holiness of life is prescribed to them as a rule even in this life, while the welfare proportioned to
it, namely, bliss, is represented as attainable only in an eternity; because the former must always be the pattern of
their conduct in every state, and progress towards it is already possible and necessary in this life; while the latter,
under the name of happiness, cannot be attained at all in this world (so far as our own power is concerned), and
therefore is made simply an object of hope. Nevertheless, the Christian principle of morality itself is not theological
(so as to be heteronomy), but is autonomy of pure practical reason, since it does not make the knowledge of God and His
will the foundation of these laws, but only of the attainment of the summum bonum, on condition of following these
laws, and it does not even place the proper spring of this obedience in the desired results, but solely in the
conception of duty, as that of which the faithful observance alone constitutes the worthiness to obtain those happy
consequences.

14 It is commonly held that the Christian precept of morality
has no advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the Stoics; the distinction between them is,
however, very obvious. The Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral
dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed
the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of the mind above the lower springs of the
senses, which owe their power only to weakness of mind. With them therefore, virtue was a sort of heroism in the wise
man raising himself above the animal nature of man, is sufficient for Himself, and, while he prescribes duties to
others, is himself raised above them, and is not subject to any temptation to transgress the moral law. All this,
however, they could not have done if they had conceived this law in all its purity and strictness, as the precept of
the Gospel does. When I give the name idea to a perfection to which nothing adequate can be given in experience, it
does not follow that the moral ideas are thing transcendent, that is something of which we could not even determine the
concept adequately, or of which it is uncertain whether there is any object corresponding to it at all, as is the case
with the ideas of speculative reason; on the contrary, being types of practical perfection, they serve as the
indispensable rule of conduct and likewise as the standard of comparison. Now if I consider Christian morals on their
philosophical side, then compared with the ideas of the Greek schools, they would appear as follows: the ideas of the
Cynics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Christians are: simplicity of nature, prudence, wisdom, and holiness. In
respect of the way of attaining them, the Greek schools were distinguished from one another thus that the Cynics only
required common sense, the others the path of science, but both found the mere use of natural powers sufficient for the
purpose. Christian morality, because its precept is framed (as a moral precept must be) so pure and unyielding, takes
from man all confidence that he can be fully adequate to it, at least in this life, but again sets it up by enabling us
to hope that if we act as well as it is in our power to do, then what is not in our power will come in to our aid from
another source, whether we know how this may be or not. Aristotle and Plato differed only as to the origin of our moral
conceptions.

In this manner, the moral laws lead through the conception of the summum bonum as the object and final end of pure
practical reason to religion, that is, to the recognition of all duties as divine commands, not as sanctions, that is
to say, arbitrary ordinances of a foreign and contingent in themselves, but as essential laws of every free will in
itself, which, nevertheless, must be regarded as commands of the Supreme Being, because it is only from a morally
perfect (holy and good) and at the same time all-powerful will, and consequently only through harmony with this will,
that we can hope to attain the summum bonum which the moral law makes it our duty to take as the object of our
endeavours. Here again, then, all remains disinterested and founded merely on duty; neither fear nor hope being made
the fundamental springs, which if taken as principles would destroy the whole moral worth of actions. The moral law
commands me to make the highest possible good in a world the ultimate object of all my conduct. But I cannot hope to
effect this otherwise than by the harmony of my will with that of a holy and good Author of the world; and although the
conception of the summum bonum as a whole, in which the greatest happiness is conceived as combined in the most exact
proportion with the highest degree of moral perfection (possible in creatures), includes my own happiness, yet it is
not this that is the determining principle of the will which is enjoined to promote the summum bonum, but the moral
law, which, on the contrary, limits by strict conditions my unbounded desire of happiness.

Hence also morality is not properly the doctrine how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy
of happiness. It is only when religion is added that there also comes in the hope of participating some day in
happiness in proportion as we have endeavoured to be not unworthy of it.

A man is worthy to possess a thing or a state when his possession of it is in harmony with the summum bonum. We can
now easily see that all worthiness depends on moral conduct, since in the conception of the summum bonum this
constitutes the condition of the rest (which belongs to one’s state), namely, the participation of happiness. Now it
follows from this that morality should never be treated as a doctrine of happiness, that is, an instruction how to
become happy; for it has to do simply with the rational condition (conditio sine qua non) of happiness, not with the
means of attaining it. But when morality has been completely expounded (which merely imposes duties instead of
providing rules for selfish desires), then first, after the moral desire to promote the summum bonum (to bring the
kingdom of God to us) has been awakened, a desire founded on a law, and which could not previously arise in any selfish
mind, and when for the behoof of this desire the step to religion has been taken, then this ethical doctrine may be
also called a doctrine of happiness because the hope of happiness first begins with religion only.

We can also see from this that, when we ask what is God’s ultimate end in creating the world, we must not name the
happiness of the rational beings in it, but the summum bonum, which adds a further condition to that wish of such
beings, namely, the condition of being worthy of happiness, that is, the morality of these same rational beings, a
condition which alone contains the rule by which only they can hope to share in the former at the hand of a wise
Author. For as wisdom, theoretically considered, signifies the knowledge of the summum bonum and, practically, the
accordance of the will with the summum bonum, we cannot attribute to a supreme independent wisdom an end based merely
on goodness. For we cannot conceive the action of this goodness (in respect of the happiness of rational beings) as
suitable to the highest original good, except under the restrictive conditions of harmony with the holiness15 of his will. Therefore, those who placed the end of creation in the glory of God
(provided that this is not conceived anthropomorphically as a desire to be praised) have perhaps hit upon the best
expression. For nothing glorifies God more than that which is the most estimable thing in the world, respect for his
command, the observance of the holy duty that his law imposes on us, when there is added thereto his glorious plan of
crowning such a beautiful order of things with corresponding happiness. If the latter (to speak humanly) makes Him
worthy of love, by the former He is an object of adoration. Even men can never acquire respect by benevolence alone,
though they may gain love, so that the greatest beneficence only procures them honour when it is regulated by
worthiness.

15 In order to make these characteristics of these conceptions
clear, I add the remark that whilst we ascribe to God various attributes, the quality of which we also find applicable
to creatures, only that in Him they are raised to the highest degree, e.g., power, knowledge, presence, goodness, etc.,
under the designations of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc., there are three that are ascribed to God
exclusively, and yet without the addition of greatness, and which are all moral He is the only holy, the only blessed,
the only wise, because these conceptions already imply the absence of limitation. In the order of these attributes He
is also the holy lawgiver (and creator), the good governor (and preserver) and the just judge, three attributes which
include everything by which God is the object of religion, and in conformity with which the metaphysical perfections
are added of themselves in the reason.

That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can never
be used merely as a means by any (not even by God) without being at the same time an end also himself, that therefore
humanity in our person must be holy to ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral
law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement with which alone can
anything be termed holy. For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a free will which by its
universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself.

VI. Of the Postulates of Pure Practical Reason Generally.

They all proceed from the principle of morality, which is not a postulate but a law, by which reason determines the
will directly, which will, because it is so determined as a pure will, requires these necessary conditions of obedience
to its precept. These postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do
[not] extend our speculative knowledge, they give objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general (by
means of their reference to what is practical), and give it a right to concepts, the possibility even of which it could
not otherwise venture to affirm.

These postulates are those of immortality, freedom positively considered (as the causality of a being so far as he
belongs to the intelligible world), and the existence of God. The first results from the practically necessary
condition of a duration adequate to the complete fulfilment of the moral law; the second from the necessary supposition
of independence of the sensible world, and of the faculty of determining one’s will according to the law of an
intelligible world, that is, of freedom; the third from the necessary condition of the existence of the summum bonum in
such an intelligible world, by the supposition of the supreme independent good, that is, the existence of God.

Thus the fact that respect for the moral law necessarily makes the summum bonum an object of our endeavours, and the
supposition thence resulting of its objective reality, lead through the postulates of practical reason to conceptions
which speculative reason might indeed present as problems, but could never solve. Thus it leads: 1. To that one in the
solution of which the latter could do nothing but commit paralogisms (namely, that of immortality), because it could
not lay hold of the character of permanence, by which to complete the psychological conception of an ultimate subject
necessarily ascribed to the soul in self-consciousness, so as to make it the real conception of a substance, a
character which practical reason furnishes by the postulate of a duration required for accordance with the moral law in
the summum bonum, which is the whole end of practical reason. 2. It leads to that of which speculative reason contained
nothing but antinomy, the solution of which it could only found on a notion Problematically conceivable indeed, but
whose objective reality it could not prove or determine, namely, the cosmological idea of an intelligible world and the
consciousness of our existence in it, by means of the postulate of freedom (the reality of which it lays down by virtue
of the moral law), and with it likewise the law of an intelligible world, to which speculative reason could only point,
but could not define its conception. 3. What speculative reason was able to think, but was obliged to leave
undetermined as a mere transcendental ideal, viz., the theological conception of the first Being, to this it gives
significance (in a practical view, that is, as a condition of the possibility of the object of a will determined by
that law), namely, as the supreme principle of the summum bonum in an intelligible world, by means of moral legislation
in it invested with sovereign power.

Is our knowledge, however, actually extended in this way by pure practical reason, and is that immanent in practical
reason which for the speculative was only transcendent? Certainly, but only in a practical point of view. For we do not
thereby take knowledge of the nature of our souls, nor of the intelligible world, nor of the Supreme Being, with
respect to what they are in themselves, but we have merely combined the conceptions of them in the practical concept of
the summum bonum as the object of our will, and this altogether a priori, but only by means of the moral law, and
merely in reference to it, in respect of the object which it commands. But how freedom is possible, and how we are to
conceive this kind of causality theoretically and positively, is not thereby discovered; but only that there is such a
causality is postulated by the moral law and in its behoof. It is the same with the remaining ideas, the possibility of
which no human intelligence will ever fathom, but the truth of which, on the other hand, no sophistry will ever wrest
from the conviction even of the commonest man.

VII. How is it possible to conceive an Extension of Pure Reason in a Practical point of view, without its Knowledge
as Speculative being enlarged at the same time?

In order not to be too abstract, we will answer this question at once in its application to the present case. In
order to extend a pure cognition practically, there must be an a priori purpose given, that is, an end as object (of
the will), which independently of all theological principle is presented as practically necessary by an imperative
which determines the will directly (a categorical imperative), and in this case that is the summum bonum. This,
however, is not possible without presupposing three theoretical conceptions (for which, because they are mere
conceptions of pure reason, no corresponding intuition can be found, nor consequently by the path of theory any
objective reality); namely, freedom, immortality, and God. Thus by the practical law which commands the existence of
the highest good possible in a world, the possibility of those objects of pure speculative reason is postulated, and
the objective reality which the latter could not assure them. By this the theoretical knowledge of pure reason does
indeed obtain an accession; but it consists only in this, that those concepts which otherwise it had to look upon as
problematical (merely thinkable) concepts, are now shown assertorially to be such as actually have objects; because
practical reason indispensably requires their existence for the possibility of its object, the summum bonum, which
practically is absolutely necessary, and this justifies theoretical reason in assuming them. But this extension of
theoretical reason is no extension of speculative, that is, we cannot make any positive use of it in a theoretical
point of view. For as nothing is accomplished in this by practical reason, further than that these concepts are real
and actually have their (possible) objects, and nothing in the way of intuition of them is given thereby (which indeed
could not be demanded), hence the admission of this reality does not render any synthetical proposition possible.
Consequently, this discovery does not in the least help us to extend this knowledge of ours in a speculative point of
view, although it does in respect of the practical employment of pure reason. The above three ideas of speculative
reason are still in themselves not cognitions; they are however (transcendent) thoughts, in which there is nothing
impossible. Now, by help of an apodeictic practical law, being necessary conditions of that which it commands to be
made an object, they acquire objective reality; that is, we learn from it that they have objects, without being able to
point out how the conception of them is related to an object, and this, too, is still not a cognition of these objects;
for we cannot thereby form any synthetical judgement about them, nor determine their application theoretically;
consequently, we can make no theoretical rational use of them at all, in which use all speculative knowledge of reason
consists. Nevertheless, the theoretical knowledge, not indeed of these objects, but of reason generally, is so far
enlarged by this, that by the practical postulates objects were given to those ideas, a merely problematical thought
having by this means first acquired objective reality. There is therefore no extension of the knowledge of given
supersensible objects, but an extension of theoretical reason and of its knowledge in respect of the supersensible
generally; inasmuch as it is compelled to admit that there are such objects, although it is not able to define them
more closely, so as itself to extend this knowledge of the objects (which have now been given it on practical grounds,
and only for practical use). For this accession, then, pure theoretical reason, for which all those ideas are
transcendent and without object, has simply to thank its practical faculty. In this they become immanent and
constitutive, being the source of the possibility of realizing the necessary object of pure practical reason (the
summum bonum); whereas apart from this they are transcendent, and merely regulative principles of speculative reason,
which do not require it to assume a new object beyond experience, but only to bring its use in experience nearer to
completeness. But when once reason is in possession of this accession, it will go to work with these ideas as
speculative reason (properly only to assure the certainty of its practical use) in a negative manner: that is, not
extending but clearing up its knowledge so as on one side to keep off anthropomorphism, as the source of superstition,
or seeming extension of these conceptions by supposed experience; and on the other side fanaticism, which promises the
same by means of supersensible intuition or feelings of the like kind. All these are hindrances to the practical use of
pure reason, so that the removal of them may certainly be considered an extension of our knowledge in a practical point
of view, without contradicting the admission that for speculative purposes reason has not in the least gained by
this.

Every employment of reason in respect of an object requires pure concepts of the understanding (categories), without
which no object can be conceived. These can be applied to the theoretical employment of reason, i.e., to that kind of
knowledge, only in case an intuition (which is always sensible) is taken as a basis, and therefore merely in order to
conceive by means of them an object of possible experience. Now here what have to be thought by means of the categories
in order to be known are ideas of reason, which cannot be given in any experience. Only we are not here concerned with
the theoretical knowledge of the objects of these ideas, but only with this, whether they have objects at all. This
reality is supplied by pure practical reason, and theoretical reason has nothing further to do in this but to think
those objects by means of categories. This, as we have elsewhere clearly shown, can be done well enough without needing
any intuition (either sensible or supersensible) because the categories have their seat and origin in the pure
understanding, simply as the faculty of thought, before and independently of any intuition, and they always only
signify an object in general, no matter in what way it may be given to us. Now when the categories are to be applied to
these ideas, it is not possible to give them any object in intuition; but that such an object actually exists, and
consequently that the category as a mere form of thought is here not empty but has significance, this is sufficiently
assured them by an object which practical reason presents beyond doubt in the concept of the summum bonum, the reality
of the conceptions which are required for the possibility of the summum bonum; without, however, effecting by this
accession the least extension of our knowledge on theoretical principles.

When these ideas of God, of an intelligible world (the kingdom of God), and of immortality are further determined by
predicates taken from our own nature, we must not regard this determination as a sensualizing of those pure rational
ideas (anthropomorphism), nor as a transcendent knowledge of supersensible objects; for these predicates are no others
than understanding and will, considered too in the relation to each other in which they must be conceived in the moral
law, and therefore, only so far as a pure practical use is made of them. As to all the rest that belongs to these
conceptions psychologically, that is, so far as we observe these faculties of ours empirically in their exercise (e.g.,
that the understanding of man is discursive, and its notions therefore not intuitions but thoughts, that these follow
one another in time, that his will has its satisfaction always dependent on the existence of its object, etc., which
cannot be the case in the Supreme Being), from all this we abstract in that case, and then there remains of the notions
by which we conceive a pure intelligence nothing more than just what is required for the possibility of conceiving a
moral law. There is then a knowledge of God indeed, but only for practical purposes, and, if we attempt to extend it to
a theoretical knowledge, we find an understanding that has intuitions, not thoughts, a will that is directed to objects
on the existence of which its satisfaction does not in the least depend (not to mention the transcendental predicates,
as, for example, a magnitude of existence, that is duration, which, however, is not in time, the only possible means we
have of conceiving existence as magnitude). Now these are all attributes of which we can form no conception that would
help to the knowledge of the object, and we learn from this that they can never be used for a theory of supersensible
beings, so that on this side they are quite incapable of being the foundation of a speculative knowledge, and their use
is limited simply to the practice of the moral law.

This last is so obvious, and can be proved so clearly by fact, that we may confidently challenge all pretended
natural theologians (a singular name)16 to specify (over and above the merely
ontological predicates) one single attribute, whether of the understanding or of the will, determining this object of
theirs, of which we could not show incontrovertibly that, if we abstract from it everything anthropomorphic, nothing
would remain to us but the mere word, without our being able to connect with it the smallest notion by which we could
hope for an extension of theoretical knowledge. But as to the practical, there still remains to us of the attributes of
understanding and will the conception of a relation to which objective reality is given by the practical law (which
determines a priori precisely this relation of the understanding to the will). When once this is done, then reality is
given to the conception of the object of a will morally determined (the conception of the summum bonum), and with it to
the conditions of its possibility, the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, but always only relatively to the
practice of the moral law (and not for any speculative purpose).

16 Learning is properly only the whole content of the
historical sciences. Consequently it is only the teacher of revealed theology that can be called a learned theologian.
If, however, we choose to call a man learned who is in possession of the rational sciences (mathematics and
philosophy), although even this would be contrary to the signification of the word (which always counts as learning
only that which one must be “learned” and which, therefore, he cannot discover of himself by reason), even in that case
the philosopher would make too poor a figure with his knowledge of God as a positive science to let himself be called
on that account a learned man.

According to these remarks it is now easy to find the answer to the weighty question whether the notion of God is
one belonging to physics (and therefore also to metaphysics, which contains the pure a priori principles of the former
in their universal import) or to morals. If we have recourse to God as the Author of all things, in order to explain
the arrangements of nature or its changes, this is at least not a physical explanation, and is a complete confession
that our philosophy has come to an end, since we are obliged to assume something of which in itself we have otherwise
no conception, in order to be able to frame a conception of the possibility of what we see before our eyes.
Metaphysics, however, cannot enable us to attain by certain inference from the knowledge of this world to the
conception of God and to the proof of His existence, for this reason, that in order to say that this world could be
produced only by a God (according to the conception implied by this word) we should know this world as the most perfect
whole possible; and for this purpose should also know all possible worlds (in order to be able to compare them with
this); in other words, we should be omniscient. It is absolutely impossible, however, to know the existence of this
Being from mere concepts, because every existential proposition, that is, every proposition that affirms the existence
of a being of which I frame a concept, is a synthetic proposition, that is, one by which I go beyond that conception
and affirm of it more than was thought in the conception itself; namely, that this concept in the understanding has an
object corresponding to it outside the understanding, and this it is obviously impossible to elicit by any reasoning.
There remains, therefore, only one single process possible for reason to attain this knowledge, namely, to start from
the supreme principle of its pure practical use (which in every case is directed simply to the existence of something
as a consequence of reason) and thus determine its object. Then its inevitable problem, namely, the necessary direction
of the will to the summum bonum, discovers to us not only the necessity of assuming such a First Being in reference to
the possibility of this good in the world, but, what is most remarkable, something which reason in its progress on the
path of physical nature altogether failed to find, namely, an accurately defined conception of this First Being. As we
can know only a small part of this world, and can still less compare it with all possible worlds, we may indeed from
its order, design, and greatness, infer a wise, good, powerful, etc., Author of it, but not that He is all-wise,
all-good, all-powerful, etc. It may indeed very well be granted that we should be justified in supplying this
inevitable defect by a legitimate and reasonable hypothesis; namely, that when wisdom, goodness, etc, are displayed in
all the parts that offer themselves to our nearer knowledge, it is just the same in all the rest, and that it would
therefore be reasonable to ascribe all possible perfections to the Author of the world, but these are not strict
logical inferences in which we can pride ourselves on our insight, but only permitted conclusions in which we may be
indulged and which require further recommendation before we can make use of them. On the path of empirical inquiry then
(physics), the conception of God remains always a conception of the perfection of the First Being not accurately enough
determined to be held adequate to the conception of Deity. (With metaphysic in its transcendental part nothing whatever
can be accomplished.)

When I now try to test this conception by reference to the object of practical reason, I find that the moral
principle admits as possible only the conception of an Author of the world possessed of the highest perfection. He must
be omniscient, in order to know my conduct up to the inmost root of my mental state in all possible cases and into all
future time; omnipotent, in order to allot to it its fitting consequences; similarly He must be omnipresent, eternal,
etc. Thus the moral law, by means of the conception of the summum bonum as the object of a pure practical reason,
determines the concept of the First Being as the Supreme Being; a thing which the physical (and in its higher
development the metaphysical), in other words, the whole speculative course of reason, was unable to effect. The
conception of God, then, is one that belongs originally not to physics, i.e., to speculative reason, but to morals. The
same may be said of the other conceptions of reason of which we have treated above as postulates of it in its practical
use.

In the history of Grecian philosophy we find no distinct traces of a pure rational theology earlier than Anaxagoras;
but this is not because the older philosophers had not intelligence or penetration enough to raise themselves to it by
the path of speculation, at least with the aid of a thoroughly reasonable hypothesis. What could have been easier, what
more natural, than the thought which of itself occurs to everyone, to assume instead of several causes of the world,
instead of an indeterminate degree of perfection, a single rational cause having all perfection? But the evils in the
world seemed to them to be much too serious objections to allow them to feel themselves justified in such a hypothesis.
They showed intelligence and penetration then in this very point, that they did not allow themselves to adopt it, but
on the contrary looked about amongst natural causes to see if they could not find in them the qualities and power
required for a First Being. But when this acute people had advanced so far in their investigations of nature as to
treat even moral questions philosophically, on which other nations had never done anything but talk, then first they
found a new and practical want, which did not fail to give definiteness to their conception of the First Being: and in
this the speculative reason played the part of spectator, or at best had the merit of embellishing a conception that
had not grown on its own ground, and of applying a series of confirmations from the study of nature now brought forward
for the first time, not indeed to strengthen the authority of this conception (which was already established), but
rather to make a show with a supposed discovery of theoretical reason.

From these remarks, the reader of the Critique of Pure Speculative Reason will be thoroughly convinced how highly
necessary that laborious deduction of the categories was, and how fruitful for theology and morals. For if, on the one
hand, we place them in pure understanding, it is by this deduction alone that we can be prevented from regarding them,
with Plato, as innate, and founding on them extravagant pretensions to theories of the supersensible, to which we can
see no end, and by which we should make theology a magic lantern of chimeras; on the other hand, if we regard them as
acquired, this deduction saves us from restricting, with Epicurus, all and every use of them, even for practical
purposes, to the objects and motives of the senses. But now that the Critique has shown by that deduction, first, that
they are not of empirical origin, but have their seat and source a priori in the pure understanding; secondly, that as
they refer to objects in general independently of the intuition of them, hence, although they cannot effect theoretical
knowledge, except in application to empirical objects, yet when applied to an object given by pure practical reason
they enable us to conceive the supersensible definitely, only so far, however, as it is defined by such predicates as
are necessarily connected with the pure practical purpose given a priori and with its possibility. The speculative
restriction of pure reason and its practical extension bring it into that relation of equality in which reason in
general can be employed suitably to its end, and this example proves better than any other that the path to wisdom, if
it is to be made sure and not to be impassable or misleading, must with us men inevitably pass through science; but it
is not till this is complete that we can be convinced that it leads to this goal.

VIII. Of Belief from a Requirement of Pure Reason.

A want or requirement of pure reason in its speculative use leads only to a hypothesis; that of pure practical
reason to a postulate; for in the former case I ascend from the result as high as I please in the series of causes, not
in order to give objective reality to the result (e.g., the causal connection of things and changes in the world), but
in order thoroughly to satisfy my inquiring reason in respect of it. Thus I see before me order and design in nature,
and need not resort to speculation to assure myself of their reality, but to explain them I have to presuppose a Deity
as their cause; and then since the inference from an effect to a definite cause is always uncertain and doubtful,
especially to a cause so precise and so perfectly defined as we have to conceive in God, hence the highest degree of
certainty to which this presupposition can be brought is that it is the most rational opinion for us men.17 On the other hand, a requirement of pure practical reason is based on a duty, that
of making something (the summum bonum) the object of my will so as to promote it with all my powers; in which case I
must suppose its possibility and, consequently, also the conditions necessary thereto, namely, God, freedom, and
immortality; since I cannot prove these by my speculative reason, although neither can I refute them. This duty is
founded on something that is indeed quite independent of these suppositions and is of itself apodeictically certain,
namely, the moral law; and so far it needs no further support by theoretical views as to the inner constitution of
things, the secret final aim of the order of the world, or a presiding ruler thereof, in order to bind me in the most
perfect manner to act in unconditional conformity to the law. But the subjective effect of this law, namely, the mental
disposition conformed to it and made necessary by it, to promote the practically possible summum bonum, this
presupposes at least that the latter is possible, for it would be practically impossible to strive after the object of
a conception which at bottom was empty and had no object. Now the above-mentioned postulates concern only the physical
or metaphysical conditions of the possibility of the summum bonum; in a word, those which lie in the nature of things;
not, however, for the sake of an arbitrary speculative purpose, but of a practically necessary end of a pure rational
will, which in this case does not choose, but obeys an inexorable command of reason, the foundation of which is
objective, in the constitution of things as they must be universally judged by pure reason, and is not based on
inclination; for we are in nowise justified in assuming, on account of what we wish on merely subjective grounds, that
the means thereto are possible or that its object is real. This, then, is an absolutely necessary requirement, and what
it presupposes is not merely justified as an allowable hypothesis, but as a postulate in a practical point of view; and
admitting that the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command (not as a rule of prudence), the righteous
man may say: “I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence outside the chain of
physical causes and in a pure world of the understanding, and lastly, that my duration be endless; I firmly abide by
this, and will not let this faith be taken from me; for in this instance alone my interest, because I must not relax
anything of it, inevitably determines my judgement, without regarding sophistries, however unable I may be to answer
them or to oppose them with others more plausible.18

17 But even here we should not be able to allege a requirement
of reason, if we had not before our eyes a problematical, but yet inevitable, conception of reason, namely, that of an
absolutely necessary being. This conception now seeks to be defined, and this, in addition to the tendency to extend
itself, is the objective ground of a requirement of speculative reason, namely, to have a more precise definition of
the conception of a necessary being which is to serve as the first cause of other beings, so as to make these latter
knowable by some means. Without such antecedent necessary problems there are no requirements — at least not of pure
reason — the rest are requirements of inclination.

18 In the Deutsches Museum, February, 1787, there is a
dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late Wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which
he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the
example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain,
would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the
want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is
affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of
the wish. But in the present case we have a want of reason springing from an objective determining principle of the
will, namely, the moral law, which necessarily binds every rational being, and therefore justifies him in assuming a
priori in nature the conditions proper for it, and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use of
reason. It is a duty to realize the summum bonum to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be possible,
consequently it is unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective
possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connection with which alone it is valid.

In order to prevent misconception in the use of a notion as yet so unusual as that of a faith of pure practical
reason, let me be permitted to add one more remark. It might almost seem as if this rational faith were here announced
as itself a command, namely, that we should assume the summum bonum as possible. But a faith that is commanded is
nonsense. Let the preceding analysis, however, be remembered of what is required to be supposed in the conception of
the summum bonum, and it will be seen that it cannot be commanded to assume this possibility, and no practical
disposition of mind is required to admit it; but that speculative reason must concede it without being asked, for no
one can affirm that it is impossible in itself that rational beings in the world should at the same time be worthy of
happiness in conformity with the moral law and also possess this happiness proportionately. Now in respect of the first
element of the summum bonum, namely, that which concerns morality, the moral law gives merely a command, and to doubt
the possibility of that element would be the same as to call in question the moral law itself. But as regards the
second element of that object, namely, happiness perfectly proportioned to that worthiness, it is true that there is no
need of a command to admit its possibility in general, for theoretical reason has nothing to say against it; but the
manner in which we have to conceive this harmony of the laws of nature with those of freedom has in it something in
respect of which we have a choice, because theoretical reason decides nothing with apodeictic certainty about it, and
in respect of this there may be a moral interest which turns the scale.

I had said above that in a mere course of nature in the world an accurate correspondence between happiness and moral
worth is not to be expected and must be regarded as impossible, and that therefore the possibility of the summum bonum
cannot be admitted from this side except on the supposition of a moral Author of the world. I purposely reserved the
restriction of this judgement to the subjective conditions of our reason, in order not to make use of it until the
manner of this belief should be defined more precisely. The fact is that the impossibility referred to is merely
subjective, that is, our reason finds it impossible for it to render conceivable in the way of a mere course of nature
a connection so exactly proportioned and so thoroughly adapted to an end, between two sets of events happening
according to such distinct laws; although, as with everything else in nature that is adapted to an end, it cannot
prove, that is, show by sufficient objective reason, that it is not possible by universal laws of nature.

Now, however, a deciding principle of a different kind comes into play to turn the scale in this uncertainty of
speculative reason. The command to promote the summum bonum is established on an objective basis (in practical reason);
the possibility of the same in general is likewise established on an objective basis (in theoretical reason, which has
nothing to say against it). But reason cannot decide objectively in what way we are to conceive this possibility;
whether by universal laws of nature without a wise Author presiding over nature, or only on supposition of such an
Author. Now here there comes in a subjective condition of reason, the only way theoretically possible for it, of
conceiving the exact harmony of the kingdom of nature with the kingdom of morals, which is the condition of the
possibility of the summum bonum; and at the same time the only one conducive to morality (which depends on an objective
law of reason). Now since the promotion of this summum bonum, and therefore the supposition of its possibility, are
objectively necessary (though only as a result of practical reason), while at the same time the manner in which we
would conceive it rests with our own choice, and in this choice a free interest of pure practical reason decides for
the assumption of a wise Author of the world; it is clear that the principle that herein determines our judgement,
though as a want it is subjective, yet at the same time being the means of promoting what is objectively (practically)
necessary, is the foundation of a maxim of belief in a moral point of view, that is, a faith of pure practical reason.
This, then, is not commanded, but being a voluntary determination of our judgement, conducive to the moral (commanded)
purpose, and moreover harmonizing with the theoretical requirement of reason, to assume that existence and to make it
the foundation of our further employment of reason, it has itself sprung from the moral disposition of mind; it may
therefore at times waver even in the well-disposed, but can never be reduced to unbelief.

IX. Of the Wise Adaptation of Man’s Cognitive Faculties to his Practical Destination.

If human nature is destined to endeavour after the summum bonum, we must suppose also that the measure of its
cognitive faculties, and particularly their relation to one another, is suitable to this end. Now the Critique of Pure
Speculative Reason proves that this is incapable of solving satisfactorily the most weighty problems that are proposed
to it, although it does not ignore the natural and important hints received from the same reason, nor the great steps
that it can make to approach to this great goal that is set before it, which, however, it can never reach of itself,
even with the help of the greatest knowledge of nature. Nature then seems here to have provided us only in a
stepmotherly fashion with the faculty required for our end.

Suppose, now, that in this matter nature had conformed to our wish and had given us that capacity of discernment or
that enlightenment which we would gladly possess, or which some imagine they actually possess, what would in all
probability be the consequence? Unless our whole nature were at the same time changed, our inclinations, which always
have the first word, would first of all demand their own satisfaction, and, joined with rational reflection, the
greatest possible and most lasting satisfaction, under the name of happiness; the moral law would afterwards speak, in
order to keep them within their proper bounds, and even to subject them all to a higher end, which has no regard to
inclination. But instead of the conflict that the moral disposition has now to carry on with the inclinations, in
which, though after some defeats, moral strength of mind may be gradually acquired, God and eternity with their awful
majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes (for what we can prove perfectly is to us as certain as that of which
we are assured by the sight of our eyes). Transgression of the law, would, no doubt, be avoided; what is commanded
would be done; but the mental disposition, from which actions ought to proceed, cannot be infused by any command, and
in this case the spur of action is ever active and external, so that reason has no need to exert itself in order to
gather strength to resist the inclinations by a lively representation of the dignity of the law: hence most of the
actions that conformed to the law would be done from fear, a few only from hope, and none at all from duty, and the
moral worth of actions, on which alone in the eyes of supreme wisdom the worth of the person and even that of the world
depends, would cease to exist. As long as the nature of man remains what it is, his conduct would thus be changed into
mere mechanism, in which, as in a puppet-show, everything would gesticulate well, but there would be no life in the
figures. Now, when it is quite otherwise with us, when with all the effort of our reason we have only a very obscure
and doubtful view into the future, when the Governor of the world allows us only to conjecture his existence and his
majesty, not to behold them or prove them clearly; and on the other hand, the moral law within us, without promising or
threatening anything with certainty, demands of us disinterested respect; and only when this respect has become active
and dominant, does it allow us by means of it a prospect into the world of the supersensible, and then only with weak
glances: all this being so, there is room for true moral disposition, immediately devoted to the law, and a rational
creature can become worthy of sharing in the summum bonum that corresponds to the worth of his person and not merely to
his actions. Thus what the study of nature and of man teaches us sufficiently elsewhere may well be true here also;
that the unsearchable wisdom by which we exist is not less worthy of admiration in what it has denied than in what it
has granted.

Second Part.

Methodology of Pure Practical Reason.

By the methodology of pure practical reason we are not to understand the mode of proceeding with
pure practical principles (whether in study or in exposition), with a view to a scientific knowledge of them, which
alone is what is properly called method elsewhere in theoretical philosophy (for popular knowledge requires a manner,
science a method, i.e., a process according to principles of reason by which alone the manifold of any branch of
knowledge can become a system). On the contrary, by this methodology is understood the mode in which we can give the
laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and influence on its maxims, that is, by which we can make the
objectively practical reason subjectively practical also.

Now it is clear enough that those determining principles of the will which alone make maxims properly moral and give
them a moral worth, namely, the direct conception of the law and the objective necessity of obeying it as our duty,
must be regarded as the proper springs of actions, since otherwise legality of actions might be produced, but not
morality of character. But it is not so clear; on the contrary, it must at first sight seem to every one very
improbable that even subjectively that exhibition of pure virtue can have more power over the human mind, and supply a
far stronger spring even for effecting that legality of actions, and can produce more powerful resolutions to prefer
the law, from pure respect for it, to every other consideration, than all the deceptive allurements of pleasure or of
all that may be reckoned as happiness, or even than all threatenings of pain and misfortune. Nevertheless, this is
actually the case, and if human nature were not so constituted, no mode of presenting the law by roundabout ways and
indirect recommendations would ever produce morality of character. All would be simple hypocrisy; the law would be
hated, or at least despised, while it was followed for the sake of one’s own advantage. The letter of the law
(legality) would be found in our actions, but not the spirit of it in our minds (morality); and as with all our efforts
we could not quite free ourselves from reason in our judgement, we must inevitably appear in our own eyes worthless,
depraved men, even though we should seek to compensate ourselves for this mortification before the inner tribunal, by
enjoying the pleasure that a supposed natural or divine law might be imagined to have connected with it a sort of
police machinery, regulating its operations by what was done without troubling itself about the motives for doing
it.

It cannot indeed be denied that in order to bring an uncultivated or degraded mind into the track of moral goodness
some preparatory guidance is necessary, to attract it by a view of its own advantage, or to alarm it by fear of loss;
but as soon as this mechanical work, these leading-strings have produced some effect, then we must bring before the
mind the pure moral motive, which, not only because it is the only one that can be the foundation of a character (a
practically consistent habit of mind with unchangeable maxims), but also because it teaches a man to feel his own
dignity, gives the mind a power unexpected even by himself, to tear himself from all sensible attachments so far as
they would fain have the rule, and to find a rich compensation for the sacrifice he offers, in the independence of his
rational nature and the greatness of soul to which he sees that he is destined. We will therefore show, by such
observations as every one can make, that this property of our minds, this receptivity for a pure moral interest, and
consequently the moving force of the pure conception of virtue, when it is properly applied to the human heart, is the
most powerful spring and, when a continued and punctual observance of moral maxims is in question, the only spring of
good conduct. It must, however, be remembered that if these observations only prove the reality of such a feeling, but
do not show any moral improvement brought about by it, this is no argument against the only method that exists of
making the objectively practical laws of pure reason subjectively practical, through the mere force of the conception
of duty; nor does it prove that this method is a vain delusion. For as it has never yet come into vogue, experience can
say nothing of its results; one can only ask for proofs of the receptivity for such springs, and these I will now
briefly present, and then sketch the method of founding and cultivating genuine moral dispositions.

When we attend to the course of conversation in mixed companies, consisting not merely of learned persons and subtle
reasoners, but also of men of business or of women, we observe that, besides story-telling and jesting, another kind of
entertainment finds a place in them, namely, argument; for stories, if they are to have novelty and interest, are soon
exhausted, and jesting is likely to become insipid. Now of all argument there is none in which persons are more ready
to join who find any other subtle discussion tedious, none that brings more liveliness into the company, than that
which concerns the moral worth of this or that action by which the character of some person is to be made out. Persons,
to whom in other cases anything subtle and speculative in theoretical questions is dry and irksome, presently join in
when the question is to make out the moral import of a good or bad action that has been related, and they display an
exactness, a refinement, a subtlety, in excogitating everything that can lessen the purity of purpose, and consequently
the degree of virtue in it, which we do not expect from them in any other kind of speculation. In these criticisms,
persons who are passing judgement on others often reveal their own character: some, in exercising their judicial
office, especially upon the dead, seem inclined chiefly to defend the goodness that is related of this or that deed
against all injurious charges of insincerity, and ultimately to defend the whole moral worth of the person against the
reproach of dissimulation and secret wickedness; others, on the contrary, turn their thoughts more upon attacking this
worth by accusation and fault finding. We cannot always, however, attribute to these latter the intention of arguing
away virtue altogether out of all human examples in order to make it an empty name; often, on the contrary, it is only
well-meant strictness in determining the true moral import of actions according to an uncompromising law. Comparison
with such a law, instead of with examples, lowers self-conceit in moral matters very much, and not merely teaches
humility, but makes every one feel it when he examines himself closely. Nevertheless, we can for the most part observe,
in those who defend the purity of purpose in giving examples that where there is the presumption of uprightness they
are anxious to remove even the least spot, lest, if all examples had their truthfulness disputed, and if the purity of
all human virtue were denied, it might in the end be regarded as a mere phantom, and so all effort to attain it be made
light of as vain affectation and delusive conceit.

I do not know why the educators of youth have not long since made use of this propensity of reason to enter with
pleasure upon the most subtle examination of the practical questions that are thrown up; and why they have not, after
first laying the foundation of a purely moral catechism, searched through the biographies of ancient and modern times
with the view of having at hand instances of the duties laid down, in which, especially by comparison of similar
actions under different circumstances, they might exercise the critical judgement of their scholars in remarking their
greater or less moral significance. This is a thing in which they would find that even early youth, which is still
unripe for speculation of other kinds, would soon become very acute and not a little interested, because it feels the
progress of its faculty of judgement; and, what is most important, they could hope with confidence that the frequent
practice of knowing and approving good conduct in all its purity, and on the other hand of remarking with regret or
contempt the least deviation from it, although it may be pursued only as a sport in which children may compete with one
another, yet will leave a lasting impression of esteem on the one hand and disgust on the other; and so, by the mere
habit of looking on such actions as deserving approval or blame, a good foundation would be laid for uprightness in the
future course of life. Only I wish they would spare them the example of so-called noble (supermeritorious) actions, in
which our sentimental books so much abound, and would refer all to duty merely, and to the worth that a man can and
must give himself in his own eyes by the consciousness of not having transgressed it, since whatever runs up into empty
wishes and longings after inaccessible perfection produces mere heroes of romance, who, while they pique themselves on
their feeling for transcendent greatness, release themselves in return from the observance of common and every-day
obligations, which then seem to them petty and insignificant.19

19 It is quite proper to extol actions that display a great,
unselfish, sympathizing mind or humanity. But, in this case, we must fix attention not so much on the elevation of
soul, which is very fleeting and transitory, as on the subjection of the heart to duty, from which a more enduring
impression may be expected, because this implies principle (whereas the former only implies ebullitions). One need only
reflect a little and he will always find a debt that he has by some means incurred towards the human race (even if it
were only this, by the inequality of men in the civil constitution, enjoys advantages on account of which others must
be the more in want), which will prevent the thought of duty from being repressed by the self-complacent imagination of
merit.

But if it is asked: “What, then, is really pure morality, by which as a touchstone we must test the moral
significance of every action,” then I must admit that it is only philosophers that can make the decision of this
question doubtful, for to common sense it has been decided long ago, not indeed by abstract general formulae, but by
habitual use, like the distinction between the right and left hand. We will then point out the criterion of pure virtue
in an example first, and, imagining that it is set before a boy, of say ten years old, for his judgement, we will see
whether he would necessarily judge so of himself without being guided by his teacher. Tell him the history of an honest
man whom men want to persuade to join the calumniators of an innocent and powerless person (say Anne Boleyn, accused by
Henry VIII of England). He is offered advantages, great gifts, or high rank; he rejects them. This will excite mere
approbation and applause in the mind of the hearer. Now begins the threatening of loss. Amongst these traducers are his
best friends, who now renounce his friendship; near kinsfolk, who threaten to disinherit him (he being without
fortune); powerful persons, who can persecute and harass him in all places and circumstances; a prince, who threatens
him with loss of freedom, yea, loss of life. Then to fill the measure of suffering, and that he may feel the pain that
only the morally good heart can feel very deeply, let us conceive his family threatened with extreme distress and want,
entreating him to yield; conceive himself, though upright, yet with feelings not hard or insensible either to
compassion or to his own distress; conceive him, I say, at the moment when he wishes that he had never lived to see the
day that exposed him to such unutterable anguish, yet remaining true to his uprightness of purpose, without wavering or
even doubting; then will my youthful hearer be raised gradually from mere approval to admiration, from that to
amazement, and finally to the greatest veneration, and a lively wish that he himself could be such a man (though
certainly not in such circumstances). Yet virtue is here worth so much only because it costs so much, not because it
brings any profit. All the admiration, and even the endeavour to resemble this character, rest wholly on the purity of
the moral principle, which can only be strikingly shown by removing from the springs of action everything that men may
regard as part of happiness. Morality, then, must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is
exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any
influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed
with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly. Now that whose removal
strengthens the effect of a moving force must have been a hindrance, consequently every admixture of motives taken from
our own happiness is a hindrance to the influence of the moral law on the heart. I affirm further that even in that
admired action, if the motive from which it was done was a high regard for duty, then it is just this respect for the
law that has the greatest influence on the mind of the spectator, not any pretension to a supposed inward greatness of
mind or noble meritorious sentiments; consequently duty, not merit, must have not only the most definite, but, when it
is represented in the true light of its inviolability, the most penetrating, influence on the mind.

It is more necessary than ever to direct attention to this method in our times, when men hope to produce more effect
on the mind with soft, tender feelings, or high-flown, puffing-up pretensions, which rather wither the heart than
strengthen it, than by a plain and earnest representation of duty, which is more suited to human imperfection and to
progress in goodness. To set before children, as a pattern, actions that are called noble, magnanimous, meritorious,
with the notion of captivating them by infusing enthusiasm for such actions, is to defeat our end. For as they are
still so backward in the observance of the commonest duty, and even in the correct estimation of it, this means simply
to make them fantastical romancers betimes. But, even with the instructed and experienced part of mankind, this
supposed spring has, if not an injurious, at least no genuine, moral effect on the heart, which, however, is what it
was desired to produce.

All feelings, especially those that are to produce unwonted exertions, must accomplish their effect at the moment
they are at their height and before the calm down; otherwise they effect nothing; for as there was nothing to
strengthen the heart, but only to excite it, it naturally returns to its normal moderate tone and, thus, falls back
into its previous languor. Principles must be built on conceptions; on any other basis there can only be paroxysms,
which can give the person no moral worth, nay, not even confidence in himself, without which the highest good in man,
consciousness of the morality of his mind and character, cannot exist. Now if these conceptions are to become
subjectively practical, we must not rest satisfied with admiring the objective law of morality, and esteeming it highly
in reference to humanity, but we must consider the conception of it in relation to man as an individual, and then this
law appears in a form indeed that is highly deserving of respect, but not so pleasant as if it belonged to the element
to which he is naturally accustomed; but on the contrary as often compelling him to quit this element, not without
self-denial, and to betake himself to a higher, in which he can only maintain himself with trouble and with unceasing
apprehension of a relapse. In a word, the moral law demands obedience, from duty not from predilection, which cannot
and ought not to be presupposed at all.

Let us now see, in an example, whether the conception of an action, as a noble and magnanimous one, has more
subjective moving power than if the action is conceived merely as duty in relation to the solemn law of morality. The
action by which a man endeavours at the greatest peril of life to rescue people from shipwreck, at last losing his life
in the attempt, is reckoned on one side as duty, but on the other and for the most part as a meritorious action, but
our esteem for it is much weakened by the notion of duty to himself which seems in this case to be somewhat infringed.
More decisive is the magnanimous sacrifice of life for the safety of one’s country; and yet there still remains some
scruple whether it is a perfect duty to devote one’s self to this purpose spontaneously and unbidden, and the action
has not in itself the full force of a pattern and impulse to imitation. But if an indispensable duty be in question,
the transgression of which violates the moral law itself, and without regard to the welfare of mankind, and as it were
tramples on its holiness (such as are usually called duties to God, because in Him we conceive the ideal of holiness in
substance), then we give our most perfect esteem to the pursuit of it at the sacrifice of all that can have any value
for the dearest inclinations, and we find our soul strengthened and elevated by such an example, when we convince
ourselves by contemplation of it that human nature is capable of so great an elevation above every motive that nature
can oppose to it. Juvenal describes such an example in a climax which makes the reader feel vividly the force of the
spring that is contained in the pure law of duty, as duty:

20 [Juvenal, Satirae, “Be you a good soldier, a faithful
tutor, an uncorrupted umpire also; if you are summoned as a witness in a doubtful and uncertain thing, though Phalaris
should command that you should be false, and should dictate perjuries with the bull brought to you, believe it the
highest impiety to prefer life to reputation, and for the sake of life, to lose the causes of living.”]

When we can bring any flattering thought of merit into our action, then the motive is already somewhat alloyed with
self-love and has therefore some assistance from the side of the sensibility. But to postpone everything to the
holiness of duty alone, and to be conscious that we can because our own reason recognises this as its command and says
that we ought to do it, this is, as it were, to raise ourselves altogether above the world of sense, and there is
inseparably involved in the same a consciousness of the law, as a spring of a faculty that controls the sensibility;
and although this is not always attended with effect, yet frequent engagement with this spring, and the at first minor
attempts at using it, give hope that this effect may be wrought, and that by degrees the greatest, and that a purely
moral interest in it may be produced in us.

The method then takes the following course. At first we are only concerned to make the judging of actions by moral
laws a natural employment accompanying all our own free actions, as well as the observation of those of others, and to
make it as it were a habit, and to sharpen this judgement, asking first whether the action conforms objectively to the
moral law, and to what law; and we distinguish the law that merely furnishes a principle of obligation from that which
is really obligatory (leges obligandi a legibus obligantibus); as, for instance, the law of what men’s wants require
from me, as contrasted with that which their rights demand, the latter of which prescribes essential, the former only
non-essential duties; and thus we teach how to distinguish different kinds of duties which meet in the same action. The
other point to which attention must be directed is the question whether the action was also (subjectively) done for the
sake of the moral law, so that it not only is morally correct as a deed, but also, by the maxim from which it is done,
has moral worth as a disposition. Now there is no doubt that this practice, and the resulting culture of our reason in
judging merely of the practical, must gradually produce a certain interest even in the law of reason, and consequently
in morally good actions. For we ultimately take a liking for a thing, the contemplation of which makes us feel that the
use of our cognitive faculties is extended; and this extension is especially furthered by that in which we find moral
correctness, since it is only in such an order of things that reason, with its faculty of determining a priori on
principle what ought to be done, can find satisfaction. An observer of nature takes liking at last to objects that at
first offended his senses, when he discovers in them the great adaptation of their organization to design, so that his
reason finds food in its contemplation. So Leibnitz spared an insect that he had carefully examined with the
microscope, and replaced it on its leaf, because he had found himself instructed by the view of it and had, as it were,
received a benefit from it.

But this employment of the faculty of judgement, which makes us feel our own cognitive powers, is not yet the
interest in actions and in their morality itself. It merely causes us to take pleasure in engaging in such criticism,
and it gives to virtue or the disposition that conforms to moral laws a form of beauty, which is admired, but not on
that account sought after (laudatur et alget); as everything the contemplation of which produces a consciousness of the
harmony of our powers of conception, and in which we feel the whole of our faculty of knowledge (understanding and
imagination) strengthened, produces a satisfaction, which may also be communicated to others, while nevertheless the
existence of the object remains indifferent to us, being only regarded as the occasion of our becoming aware of the
capacities in us which are elevated above mere animal nature. Now, however, the second exercise comes in, the living
exhibition of morality of character by examples, in which attention is directed to purity of will, first only as a
negative perfection, in so far as in an action done from duty no motives of inclination have any influence in
determining it. By this the pupil’s attention is fixed upon the consciousness of his freedom, and although this
renunciation at first excites a feeling of pain, nevertheless, by its withdrawing the pupil from the constraint of even
real wants, there is proclaimed to him at the same time a deliverance from the manifold dissatisfaction in which all
these wants entangle him, and the mind is made capable of receiving the sensation of satisfaction from other sources.
The heart is freed and lightened of a burden that always secretly presses on it, when instances of pure moral
resolutions reveal to the man an inner faculty of which otherwise he has no right knowledge, the inward freedom to
release himself from the boisterous importunity of inclinations, to such a degree that none of them, not even the
dearest, shall have any influence on a resolution, for which we are now to employ our reason. Suppose a case where I
alone know that the wrong is on my side, and although a free confession of it and the offer of satisfaction are so
strongly opposed by vanity, selfishness, and even an otherwise not illegitimate antipathy to the man whose rights are
impaired by me, I am nevertheless able to discard all these considerations; in this there is implied a consciousness of
independence on inclinations and circumstances, and of the possibility of being sufficient for myself, which is
salutary to me in general for other purposes also. And now the law of duty, in consequence of the positive worth which
obedience to it makes us feel, finds easier access through the respect for ourselves in the consciousness of our
freedom. When this is well established, when a man dreads nothing more than to find himself, on self-examination,
worthless and contemptible in his own eyes, then every good moral disposition can be grafted on it, because this is the
best, nay, the only guard that can keep off from the mind the pressure of ignoble and corrupting motives.

I have only intended to point out the most general maxims of the methodology of moral cultivation and exercise. As
the manifold variety of duties requires special rules for each kind, and this would be a prolix affair, I shall be
readily excused if in a work like this, which is only preliminary, I content myself with these outlines.

Conclusion.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more
steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and
conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them
before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy
in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and
systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The
second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is
traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal
and necessary connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude
of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided
with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits
(a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my
personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world,
at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not
restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.

But though admiration and respect may excite to inquiry, they cannot supply the want of it. What, then, is to be
done in order to enter on this in a useful manner and one adapted to the loftiness of the subject? Examples may serve
in this as a warning and also for imitation. The contemplation of the world began from the noblest spectacle that the
human senses present to us, and that our understanding can bear to follow in their vast reach; and it ended — in
astrology. Morality began with the noblest attribute of human nature, the development and cultivation of which give a
prospect of infinite utility; and ended — in fanaticism or superstition. So it is with all crude attempts where the
principal part of the business depends on the use of reason, a use which does not come of itself, like the use of the
feet, by frequent exercise, especially when attributes are in question which cannot be directly exhibited in common
experience. But after the maxim had come into vogue, though late, to examine carefully beforehand all the steps that
reason purposes to take, and not to let it proceed otherwise than in the track of a previously well considered method,
then the study of the structure of the universe took quite a different direction, and thereby attained an incomparably
happier result. The fall of a stone, the motion of a sling, resolved into their elements and the forces that are
manifested in them, and treated mathematically, produced at last that clear and henceforward unchangeable insight into
the system of the world which, as observation is continued, may hope always to extend itself, but need never fear to be
compelled to retreat.

This example may suggest to us to enter on the same path in treating of the moral capacities of our nature, and may
give us hope of a like good result. We have at hand the instances of the moral judgement of reason. By analysing these
into their elementary conceptions, and in default of mathematics adopting a process similar to that of chemistry, the
separation of the empirical from the rational elements that may be found in them, by repeated experiments on common
sense, we may exhibit both pure, and learn with certainty what each part can accomplish of itself, so as to prevent on
the one hand the errors of a still crude untrained judgement, and on the other hand (what is far more necessary) the
extravagances of genius, by which, as by the adepts of the philosopher’s stone, without any methodical study or
knowledge of nature, visionary treasures are promised and the true are thrown away. In one word, science (critically
undertaken and methodically directed) is the narrow gate that leads to the true doctrine of practical wisdom, if we
understand by this not merely what one ought to do, but what ought to serve teachers as a guide to construct well and
clearly the road to wisdom which everyone should travel, and to secure others from going astray. Philosophy must always
continue to be the guardian of this science; and although the public does not take any interest in its subtle
investigations, it must take an interest in the resulting doctrines, which such an examination first puts in a clear
light.

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